Sly Cooper & The Gang in: A Grimm Tale
by M2the2ndpower
Summary: This is a story that I started a few years ago. It takes place after Sly 3, Honor Among Thieves. Reviews are greatly appreciated! Note: The uploading may be cut short for the next few weeks as I will be job-hunting. I will try to post new chapters in my free time.
1. Trouble in Paradise

"How dare you trick me like that, Cooper!" Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox shouted at the running criminal, her trusty shock pistol firing bolts at the raccoon. Sly had his cane clutched in his hand, dodging the berserk waves of electric blasts. They've been running around the streets of Paris for over an hour now. The time was nearing midnight. He was hoping that she would never find out, that the two of them could have a steady relationship. Then again, what kind of relationship could a cop and a thief possibly have?

_"__Why did I ask her to dance with me...?"_ Sly thought, recalling what happened.

Sly had been flirting with Carmelita for years and was gifted the opportunity to create a real relationship between the two of them. Following the defeat of Doctor M, Sly pretended to have amnesia and posed as a member of Interpol working alongside Inspector Fox. Tonight was meant to be a special night. Her boss, Inspector Barkley, was hosting a fancy dinner party. Carmelita Fox and her partner, Constable Cooper had been invited to this party. Neither of them knew anyone else at this party besides Barkley and few inspectors. They all seem focused together at this time, so the two of them sat with each other. She was wearing a long scarlet dress with matching high heels. His attire was a navy-blue tuxedo with a red rose tucked into his overcoat's pocket. It had been a dull evening until the music picked up. Sly saw this as an opportunity to bring him and Carmelita (literally and figuratively) closer together.

That isn't to say that the two of them haven't been getting along, it has just been difficult to work alongside Carmelita without blowing his cover. Up until now, he had been extremely careful not to give any hints. Up until now...

Tonight, Sly had made a crucial mistake. He had asked her to dance. There's nothing wrong with that asking her to dance… The problem was that Sly had only learned the one dance that the couple performed in India. That dance was meant as a diversion while the team stole Clockwerk's Wings from Rajan. Sly intended this one to be passionate and meaningful. Having been fooled once before with the same trick, she was not going to let him get away with it this time. Near the end of the song, Carmelita pulled away from him, trying to find a way to solve the matter quietly. Sly was concerned for a moment, until she strangely asked if they could be alone.

Sly sighed before speaking. "Meet me on the balcony," he told her. She went ahead while he ran to the restroom to compose himself. He had definitely blown his cover. He knew it. What he didn't know was how she would respond to this.

About 5 minutes later, Sly came out onto the building's balcony. He was refreshed but struggling to relax. Carmelita had her back turned to him and it appeared as if she was looking out into the night sky. Her scarlet dress flowed softly in the wind. As soon as Sly was close enough, she spun around to face him.

At this point, Sly would've taken any response from her as a sign of reassurance. What he didn't expect was to be reunited with the barrel of her loaded shock pistol. She simply stood there, her pistol targeted directly at the raccoon. Sly froze, frantically thinking of what to do next. The two of them stood for several minutes in a standoff, the sounds of the party fading to the painful silence surrounding them. Sly noticed that in all that time, Carmelita never called for backup or raised an alarm. Finally, after about ten long minutes, Carmelita spoke.

"Alright Ringtail," She began, "What are you trying to steal this time?"

For some reason, the best thing that Sly can think of was a corny pickup line.

"The only thing here to steal is your heart."

Carmelita was not amused. "Can it, Cooper. There must be some reason you-"

She paused as she thought over his actions. It had been a month since he supposedly lost his memory. All this time the two would appear as the perfect couple. Was it all a lie? Was it a scam? A sudden realization occurred. If it was a lie after all, she had been his cover story. She told everyone that he had amnesia. And now, she had been an accomplice. This was the chance that they had to be together. Was all of the romance fake as well? Carmelita chest felt heavy and she suddenly felt sick. She had just played victim to a month-long scam by a thief. What did he really want?

While Carmelita was busy putting pieces together, Sly saw that her stance faltered. Her pistol was still aimed at him, but she wobbled as if she would soon faint. A single tear left her eye and ran down her cheek. Sly made a move to comfort her but his quick action snapped her out of her trance. She now stared at him coldly, her eyes-although red and teary-burned with anger and hate. He felt a strong sense of guilt as she now only thought of him as a criminal.

"Carmelita, I-" Sly started to say, but he was interrupted.

"You still haven't answered my question... Why are you doing this? Why spend a month to deceive me like the no-good thief that you are? Do you get some thrill out of this? You act like you would kill for a date, and when you get one, it's meant as a diversion so that you and your friends can slip away under my nose."

"I didn't think that..."

"What? Didn't think that I'd be smart enough to catch you? You thought you could keep it up forever?" What did you think would happen?"

Sly remained speechless.

Carmelita took a moment to recall the night that he had lost his memory. "So how did you bribe the doctor who examined you? Or did one of your friends put on a disguise?"

Sly also recalled moments after the collapse of the Cooper vault. His cover-story was amnesia from a shot by Dr. M. Following suit, he would've been taken to a doctor to be properly examined. His body had been battered and bruised due to a large monster nearly crushing him to death. The doctor said that he would have to be severely lucky to be alive, let alone remember anything about the ordeal. He hadn't received enough head trauma to cause amnesia, but the doctor suggested that was the events that happened that night that caused it. He would recover from physical injuries, but he had to live the rest of his life as Constable Cooper.

"I don't believe it... You trick me into loving you and I fell for it..." She sighed heavily as the realization set it. "That's real a harsh move, even for you Cooper."

Sly remained silent.

"Excuse me Madam..." Winthrop stumbled out onto the balcony.

"What is it now?"

"There has been a murder here and- oh, it seems that you already know who the killer is."

"And who would that be?"

"Him," Winthrop stammered as he slowly raised an accusing finger directly at Sly.


	2. A Bad Night

Sly's mouth dropped in total shock. Surely she didn't believe him, right?

"Impossible," Carmelita replied before taking a deep breath, "Constable Cooper is a respected man of the law."

_"She called me Constable again…"_ Sly thought. _"She didn't rat me out. Why not?"_

Winthrop babbled again. "It was either him or you. I've eliminated every other possible suspect."

Carmelita felt a cold sense of dread as she pondered the possibility. "Still impossible… I was with Constable Cooper the entire night. Unless…" Carmelita looked curiously towards the nervous raccoon. No doubt that she was thinking about the moment right before they met in a stalemate staring contest. Come to think of it, that was the longest that the two had been separated this night.

Sly was anything but relaxed. He tried to maintain a decent composure but inside, he was nervous and trembling. His gut was telling him to run. He had to escape.

Following procedure, Carmelita turned to Sly. "Alright Cooper, I have no choice but to place you under arrest for suspicion of-" she paused when she finally noticed that Sly had already left. If he was innocent, why run away like a coward? Unless… She immediately took chase. Another surprise of the night was that Sly's cane and normal attire was waiting for him under the balcony. He had just enough time to quickly change into the signature blue sweater and matching cap. Carmelita kept her shock pistol with her at all times, but she couldn't completely change as fast as Sly can. She had barely enough time to slip out of her shoes before catching Sly on the run.

Once the two of them were gone, the balcony was quiet with Winthrop swaying like a leaf in the breeze.

"Winthrop, leave the two of them alone. It's your turn," Barkley exclaimed.

He and a few other inspectors were sitting at a table. All of the players were holding a hand of cards as if they were playing poker. There were a few cards left on the table where Winthrop sat earlier. Each of them had their own notepad as they constantly wrote things down. Oddly enough, there wasn't a stack of money on the table, but what appeared to be a schematic of a large house. A cardboard box was set aside on the floor.

"They're gone now…"

"Don't worry about it. They need some time together. Now are you going to play?"

"I guessed already. I said the blue person with the rope in the dining room."

"You never said that… Is that your guess?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Check for yourself." With that, Barkley picked up a small envelope that had been sitting in the middle of the table and handed it to Winthrop. He apparently had some form of anticipation as he opened the envelope and removed the contents. After a few minutes of exanimating the three cards, he walked over to the table and slammed them down in triumph.

"See! I knew it! Mrs. Peacock killed Mr. Body with a rope in the dining room!"

The other players threw down their cards in frustration; one was surprised that Ms. Scarlett wasn't the killer.

"Good game Gents," Let's play again sometime soon. I'll see you all at work tomorrow morning, yes?" This received many unhappy groans from the other players. Winthrop followed the majority out with a smirk forming on his face. If the others hadn't left all at once to get drinks, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to peek inside the envelope. The party once again died to silence.

Meanwhile, Sly and Carmelita had still been running around the streets of Paris. All this time, Sly had been running in circles. He was trying to think of a more effective way to approach the situation than running away. There was nothing else that he could do.

"Stop running and face me, Coward!"

_"Coward... That's what I am,"_ he thought. Just then, a voice came in through his binocucom's earpiece.

"Sly, your binocucom sent a distress signal, anything wrong?" It was Bentley, the team's intelligence.

"So glad to hear that voice again," Sly stated, "Bentley, I need help. Everything went completely nuts. I don't know what to do. Carmelita-"

"Slow down, Sly." the turtle said. "We need to get you to the safe-house. Murray's here too. I'll need both if we're going to complete our next mission."

"We have a new mission? What is it?" Sly asked.

"Worry about that later, like, when you're not in any danger of being arrested or killed. Head to the safe-house; the coordinates should be uploading any minute now." Bentley stammered.

"In case I forgot? You think of everything don't you?" Sly said.

"One tries. Oh, and Sly,"

"Yeah?"

"Welcome back."

"I'll see you soon, Pal."

With that, Sly turned off his binocucom.

"Stop running from me, Cooper!" Carmelita was closing the distance behind him. A new mission would hopefully keep them apart for now.

Up in the distance, he could see that the end of the street split into two directions. He knew that the path on the right was an alleyway, a dead end that not even the best of thieves can escape out of. Sly turned left, and jumped onto the nearest building, headed for the Safe-house.

"¡Maldita sea, Cooper!" When I find you, I'll arrest you and skin that ringed tail of yours!" Carmelita yelled, having just barely lost the raccoon's trail.

_"She's really angry at me now..." _He thought,_ "Maybe some time apart will do us good."_

Their safe-house was an old, abandoned, one-story house. It looked much different than the previous one. Sly landed on the roof of the Safe-house and jumped down to the door. When he walked inside, he hung his cane and hat on a coat-rack nearby. He noticed that it smelled like microwave pizza, a smell most common when they were about to start another mission.

"So who is it this time?" Sly said, sitting at the table where Bentley sat.

Bentley didn't answer him. He was sitting at his computer, hitting keys constantly. Sly never understood anything about computers other than checking e-mail and he wouldn't have it any other way. Bentley was the technical genius of the Cooper Gang. Being a box turtle that lacked extreme amounts of size and strength; Bentley made up for it with computer hacking and demolition skills. Even with a bit of hesitation during his first field mission, he still managed to perform to the best of his abilities. During the attack against the Claw Gang, Bentley was injured in the process and was left without the use of his legs. That doesn't seem to have stopped him as the wheelchair that Bentley uses was fitted with gadgets galore.

While he was typing away, Sly looked at photos on the wall. They were of allies and previous enemies. He saw pictures of the Guru, Panda King, Dimitri, even ones of himself, Bentley, and their other pal, Murray, as kids together at the orphanage. After the murder of his father, Sly was left with nothing but the Cooper Cane, and a book of writings from his Cooper ancestors.

Sly was removed from his trip along memory lane by the growl of his stomach.

"Hey Murray, any pizza left?" Sly hollered into the kitchen.

"Sit tight Sly, I'll heat some up for you."

"Please use the microwave this time," Bentley scolded him before talking towards Sly. "He almost burnt the Safe-house down by cooking it in the oven."

Sly took another look at Bentley and somehow saw under those thick eyeglasses that the turtle was extremely exhausted. Bentley probably hadn't slept in days.

"You don't look so good, Pal." Sly said.

Bentley looked up for mere seconds before returning to his work. "Neither do you. I assume Inspector Fox figured it out?" Bentley replied.

"Quicker than I thought. How are you and Penelope doing?" Sly asked, changing the subject purposely as well for his concern of his friend.

"Fine, I guess..." the turtle stated, pausing to take off his glasses and rub his eyes. "Penelope and I have been losing sleep designing a time machine and endless research attempts on our next target."

"Time machine?" Sly asked, curious.

"Please don't ask me to explain it, Sly." Bentley groaned. "Just not yet."

"Chances are that I wouldn't understand it even if you did." Sly said, noticing a smirk on the turtle's face.

"Sly! Long time no see," the hippo said excitedly. He came into the room carrying a plate of pizza and sitting with the others. Bentley became silent again. Murray was quiet, sensing that something was wrong.

"So Murray, tell me about your races," Sly said, breaking an awkward silence.

"Sure Sly... I got so many to tell you!" the hippo said excitedly as he shifted his chair and sat up to mimic being in the driver's seat of a car. He occasionally paused from his stories to devour another piece of pizza.

As much as Bentley was the brain of the Cooper Gang, Murray was the brawn. Being a muscularly-bound hippo, he was more than suited for the job. He often used his impressive strength and driving skills to get the gang out of tight situations. While Bentley preferred elaborate and strategized plans, Murray's favorite approach was the improvised kind. This came in handy whenever either Bentley failed on providing escape plans or whenever Sly failed to follow said plans. After the most recent triumph of obtaining possession of the Cooper vault, Murray finished his soul search with the Guru, and pursued his dream of stock van racing. When one of his races ended in France, Murray decided to give Bentley and Penelope a surprise visit. He was the one surprised to learn that Bentley had meant to contact him for another mission.

"That unlucky fellow would've finished in first, if his wheel didn't come off..." Murray said, grinning.

"Wow Murr, never thought of you as a cheater before."

"Oh, I didn't cheat. I saw someone else loosen the bolts on his tires. I tried to warn him..."

"So what did you do after the race? I mean, someone must have snitched."

"The guy whose wheel came off was sorry that he didn't listen to me and the guy who cheated was banned from racing ever again. They let me keep the trophy."

"That a boy, Murray. You played fair and you won."

This received a grunt from Bentley. Perhaps it was more of a chuckle than an unhappy grunt. The other two did not get the joke. "Alright, it's too late at night to do anything now. I suggest that we meet here tomorrow morning. I need some more time..." Bentley mumbled, before yawning and rolling his wheelchair to his room.

Murray and Sly exchanged worried glances; Murray's mouth was already full with leftover pizza. Bentley wasn't this much troubled with a case since designing the Cooper Vault job. Maybe something was wrong... Regardless, the two sat silently. Sly ate some of the leftover pizza before turning in for the night. Murray finished what was in his mouth, and then put away the rest, strangely, no longer having an appetite. He too, turned in for the night.


	3. The Next Morning

The next morning, Inspector Fox went to Interpol Headquarters in France. She sat in her office, staring out the window while lost in thought. When she lost Cooper's trail last night, she decided to walk home. She had a nice, long discussion with herself, trying to make sense of Cooper's actions. Confused, she decided to call it a night and chase his tail the next time. The gray clouds of the early morning were not providing much support. She decided to close the curtains in order to block out the negative view. She then returned to the couch as her lamp now barely illuminated the room. Any minute now, her boss, Inspector Barkley, would call her to give her a hard time about last night. But for now, Carmelita sat on her couch, almost falling asleep. Even the morning's coffee couldn't bring her from a stupor.

"Inspector Fox, in my office please."

Carmelita slumped lazily to his office, no doubt that her feet still hurt from chasing Sly barefoot last night.

"Now Inspector Fox," Barkley said calmly.

_"Oh, here it comes..."_ She thought bleakly

"Would you mind explaining why you left the party in such a hurry? You missed it! Winthrop solved a murder!"

Carmelita felt a cold sense of dread and fear. He knew it too. Sly is a murderer. Would she be considered as an accomplice?

"Inspector Barkley, about that... Constable Cooper-" she started to say.

Barkley interrupted, "-Is a great guy, isn't he? He seems well trained in physical combat, his agility is impressive. Remind me to have a word with him."

"You'll have a word with him alright..." She thought aloud, trying to lighten her mood.

Barkley saw this failed attempt and made his own. "Don't feel bad Inspector, you can join us in a game of Clue some other day."

"But Cooper is-" Carmelita stopped after realizing what her boss had just said. Winthrop had just accused Sly of murdering a board game character. She felt a heavy sense of guilt and confusion. She slumped into the chair in front of Barkley's desk.

"Ms. Fox... Is there something that you are not telling me?"

"Actually, there is... Constable Cooper is Sly Cooper..."

"Obviously... We all knew that when you brought him to us. We refused to believe that Sly Cooper had become a man of the law. I eventually warmed up to him. Hard to believe that the Great Sly Cooper would lose his memory. Such an unfitting end, don't you think?

"Yes…" She softly said. Inside, she was torn apart about what to do. She needed time to think… Sly Cooper had lied to her about amnesia. He had been on the inside of Interpol for about 4 weeks now. How much had he learned? Was he now a threat? He had to be stopped…

"Sir… I would like to request a warrant for the arrest of Sly Cooper."

"Constable Cooper? What is he charged with?"

Carmelita took a deep breath and let it out slowly. To her, it felt like she was breathing her last breath.

"The entire thing was a scam. I was being played the entire time. I figured that Cooper was up to something. That's why I-"

"How long have you known?"

"Sir?"

Inspector Barkley glared towards her. She sank in her seat. Even after all these years, he still knew how to be intimidating.

"How long have you known?" he asked again.

"Sir, I just found out last night. I never thought Cooper could change. I had my doubts at first, but he fooled me too."

Barkley look more relaxed.

"That's a relief," he sighed.

"What do you mean?"

"If you knew the entire time and never told anyone, then you'd be considered an accomplice to a federal crime."

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Don't worry Ms. Fox; since that's not the case, you're not at fault for what he did."

"That _is _a relief." Carmelita said softly.

"That still leaves us with a problem. Cooper is once again loose out there."

"It won't be a problem for long, Inspector. I can make sure of that." Carmelita said with sudden enthusiasm.

"Are you sure, Ms. Fox?" he said. His voice had now changed to a soothing tone. "Because it seems to me that this case is becoming more personal than professional. Perhaps it would be best if-"

"Are you going to reassign me?"

"Yes, that's what I was considering."

"Inspector," Carmelita said, rising from her chair, "I've been working this case for years now. I'm the only one with enough experience to catch Cooper. There is no one on the force that can replace me!"

Barkley barely flinched at her outburst. "Ms. Fox, what you said was true, but please consider this: can you handle it?"

"Can I handle it? What do you mean by that?"

Before Barkley was able to clarify, a worried-looking Sargent had rushed into his office.

"What is the meaning of this?" Barkley bellowed.

"Our network has been compromised. Someone has bypassed the security protocol at 0105 hours last night." The Sargent rambled.

"Anything lost?" Barkley asked.

"No sir. Whatever they were looking for, they didn't find it." The Sargent said again.

"Keep on it then. Let me know if it happens again." With that, the Sargent was gone.

"Who was that?" Carmelita asked, "I've never seen him before."

"I've seen him around a few times. He's no good at field work, so he monitors the computer network. What I want to know is how in the world could someone breach our security system?"

"Bentley... He's a member of the Cooper Gang," Carmelita replied. "He's their computer hacker." She yawned loudly before quickly recovering. Carmelita grew nervous and was obviously embarrassed.

Strange enough, Barkley just smiled. "Tell you what Ms. Fox," he said with a calmer demeanor. "We might have Cooper in our sights with this little slip-up. See what you could dig up from this. Find out what he's planning..."

"Yes Sir." With that, she turned and walked to her office. Upon reaching her office, she became too tired to stand. She sat on the couch in her office and suddenly felt dizzy.

"Mi Dios, I must be more tired than I thought."

To her it felt that the room was spinning. The soft fabric of her couch was becoming a welcoming and comfortable place.

"A few minutes wouldn't hurt..."

No sooner after laying her head on the pillow did she black-out into a deep sleep.

The following conversation took place at 09:46 AM.

(ConstableAlias has joined the chat room.)

ConstableAlias: Pass the paintbrush, would you?

(WiseWizard144 has joined the chat room.)

WiseWizard144: What color did you want?

ConstableAlias: How should I know? You're the one who wanted code words and stuff...

WiseWizard144: And for good reason... Is there a problem? Why risk contacting me now?

ConstableAlias: What were you thinking? You could've exposed yourself! The entire operation would've been blown due to your negligence.

WiseWizard144: I didn't expect an upgraded security network. Besides, I didn't find anything.

ConstableAlias: It's hard to search for something when you don't know what to look for.

WiseWizard144: ...

ConstableAlias: The case will be waiting in the file room. Send a field agent to retrieve it later this afternoon.

WiseWizard144: So, send him into a building full of inspectors and armed guards... and not to mention Inspector Fox happily sending them after him.

ConstableAlias: Don't worry. Inspector Fox will be the only one on this floor. Everyone else will be out to lunch.

WiseWizard144: Well, that's... slightly less advantageous than I hoped for...

ConstableAlias: Someone has to be there to 'guard' the building while the power is shut off for 'repairs'.

WiseWizard144: Regardless... What prevents her from arresting him on the spot?

ConstableAlias: Would it convince you if I mentioned that Inspector Fox will be asleep the entire time? She won't wake up for a while.

WiseWizard144: Perhaps, but how can you be sure of that?

ConstableAlias: Because I drugged her coffee...

WiseWizard144: WHAT?! ARE YOU INSANE?!

ConstableAlias: Relax... I'll swap the cups before she wakes up. You'll need her keys to access the file room anyway. Don't have a panic attack...

WiseWizard144: Very funny... One thing intrigues me... What's in it for you? Why are you doing this?

ConstableAlias: Same reason you are I suppose. It'll put a smile on my face to see Romeo and Juliet back together.

WiseWizard144: You do realize that both Romeo and Juliet died at the end of that story... Not the ending I would want for the two of them.

ConstableAlias: You know what I meant... They'll be happy to be together again. Seeing Inspector Fox finally catching what she has been searching for all these years will make me happy.

WiseWizard144: You have a point... Seeing Sly finally steal something he's tried for so long to steal would bring a smile to my own face.

ConstableAlias: So you're in?

WiseWizard144: Absolutely.

ConstableAlias: Excellent, I'll send the details later. It is important that he picks up that case file.

(ConstableAlias has left the chat.)

WiseWizard144: (offline monologue sequence) Very interesting... If I had to guess, I'd decipher that my contact is a member of Interpol.

(LavenderBaron has joined the chat.)

LavenderBaron: What makes you say that?

WiseWizard144: He spoke as if he personally knew Inspector Fox. I'm not aware of any personal relationships other than the one with Sly... I'm lead to assume that it is a coworker.

LavenderBaron: So, you've narrowed it down to about half a dozen people who knew Carmelita, when it could very well be someone that she doesn't know...

WiseWizard144: So, I shouldn't jump to conclusions?

LavenderBaron: Not necessarily... Your gut is right to some degree. Only a fellow Interpol agent could possibly have access to her personal coffee cup.

WiseWizard144: 3

LavenderBaron: Aww... Can we go to back to bed now please?

(This chat is now closed.)


	4. Curiosity

Inspector Barkley walked into Carmelita's office that afternoon to find that she was thoroughly reading a case file.

"Something on your mind?"

"Couldn't find anything on Cooper. Nothing on the network was missing or infected, according to the Tech Sargent."

"You spoke with him about it?"

"Yeah, from behind a closed door... He sounded really busy with something, so I left him alone. I did have a chance to find out his name though."

"Oh?"

"He said his name was Elias. Elias James."

"Hmm... The name always escapes me... What is that?" he said, motioning toward the file she had opened in her lap.

"One of your old case files, Inspector. You called it the 'Grimm Reaper' case."

"Oh yes, I had quite a few cases back in the day. This one was really interesting."

"Would you mind giving some first-hand experiences?" Carmelita asked curiously.

"Not at all, Inspector. It started late one night. I was just starting out in Interpol, so I got stuck with the night-shift. I started locking down doors, putting away files, all that basic stuff..."

"Go on..." Carmelita said, grabbing a notebook and began jotting down details.

Barkley sat next to her and continued, admiring his inspector's interest.

"Anyway... I went to over to the cells as a last minute check and I saw somebody in one of those cells. He looked feeble and just horribly starved. I was generous and gave him leftovers from lunch that day. We soon became acquaintances and I returned early the next morning with more food. He finally spoke to me when he realized that I wanted to help him. He told me a name... Grimm Hund."

Carmelita was still listening to her mentor's story, writing details as he continued.

"I got curious as to why he was here in the first place. He told me that he had been arrested many years ago."

"What exactly can you tell me about the suspect?"

"Oh yes... Grimm was a wolf in his late 60s at the time of his arrest. His body was definitely weak and feeble. His fur was untidy and a pale gray. He always spoke in some sort of 'middle-aged' tone. If I remember correctly, he had a distinctive scar on his chest; just right above his heart." Barkley paused to search the file for something. He pulled out a silver pendant and dangled it by the simple chain connected to it.

"Ah... He told me a story about this necklace..." He handed it to Carmelita, who began inspecting it. The silver metal was cold to the touch, and the pendant was shaped into a crescent moon. After studying the pendant, she carefully placed it back inside the case file.

"What was his crime?"

"Well, the file that his arresting officer wrote explained that Grimm had been caught walking into France wearing an army uniform. Not any uniform, a _United States_ uniform."

"What?"

"He was caught by border patrol. It was written somewhere that he had originally came from Germany. They started questioning his motives. To make matters worse, they wrote that his name was a German name, not French or American. They threatened to lock him up in prison unless Grimm could admit to being a German. When he refused, he was officially charged with espionage.

"Wait. When was he arrested?"

"The records say 30 years ago. The old dog was completely forgotten about for about a month."

"Wow... That's horrible! Why not call out for help or food?"

"It looked like he had lost hope."

"¡Dios Mio!" Carmelita said softly.

Before Barkley could continue, Winthrop managed to slip into the room. He stood by the doorway and gave a few taps on the open door. Both Barkley and Carmelita turned towards the intrusion; both having a similar look of aggravation.

"What do you want Winthrop?" Barkley growled.

"Excuse me Inspector Barkley," he stammered. "You promised everyone lunch earlier today?"

"Oh yes… I did… Well Inspector," he said, turning towards Carmelita, "We'll have to continue this at a later date."

"Inspector, you've taken us out for lunch every day this week…"

"Is that a complaint, Ms. Fox?"

"Not at all," Carmelita said with a smile forming on her face. Barkley rose and followed Winthrop out of her office. Carmelita's smile was looking more devious now… As she walked to her door, she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, her coffee cup. Attached to a cup of her favorite blend was a note. It simply said 'Still Friends?' and bared Sly's signature logo below that. It was heart-warming to have seen this earlier this morning… It reminded her that he still cares. That's when she knew it. Everything had led to this… But this was her little secret and hers alone. If only she had the opportunity to tell him-

"Inspector Fox? Are you coming?" Barkley said, nearly startling her.

"Yes, I'll be there in a minute."

"Alright. Grab your notebook too. You can continue our interview over lunch."

With that Barkley left towards the elevator. Carmelita closed the file that she was reading and set it on her desk. She wouldn't need it with Barkley telling the story. After removing the note from her cup, she secretly tucked it inside her jacket pocket and threw the cup away. She grabbed her notebook and her pen and quickly left to the elevator. All this time, Barkley had been patiently standing there holding it for her. Once she rushed inside, Barkley allowed the doors to close and the elevator to begin it's decent.

However, one person was left behind. Winthrop was still in his office. He was about to leave when he noticed a coffee cup on his desk next to his own. The extra one was supposed to be Carmelita's, but the one who delivers coffee noticed that she already had one. Winthrop, having been romanticizing over Carmelita for years took it for himself. Winthrop suddenly had an idea in mind...

"The coffee! That's how that Raccoon won her over… Maybe if I knew what kind she liked, we could go out on a break… Or even… a date!"

In order to determine the flavor, Winthrop took a sip.

"Hmm… this is interesting. Must be a new blend." Unsure, he took another sip. This one left him with a horrible aftertaste. It was only moments later did he become disoriented and nauseous.

"I don't like this flavor anymore..."

Instead of heading to the restroom, He only managed to stumble into his chair before passing out into a heavy sleep.


	5. Step One: Gathering Information

Everyone at the Cooper hideout was sound asleep.

Everyone except for Sly and Murray...

Sly and Murray had woken up first, so Murray decided to make breakfast. Sly was groggy most of the afternoon, having little sleep last night. Murray noticed that Bentley and Penelope were still asleep. They decided to let them sleep in. Bentley and Penelope slept in the same room, but different beds. Even though they were boyfriend/girlfriend, neither of them had the courage to take their relationship any further. For now, the two of them were perfectly fine with that. Sly and Murray just sat quietly, eating their breakfast.

Penelope was the first of the other two to wake. She came out of the room wearing a lavender night gown and matching fuzzy slippers. The mouse's fur was untidy, her blonde hair tangled, and yet, she looked lively and well rested. Sly couldn't help but look at her. The truth was that she is attractive. As a matter of fact, Penelope had a crush on Sly for a long time. The problem was that Sly was either unaware or uninterested. Also, Bentley had been secretly in love with her. When Bentley nearly risked his life to save her, she finally realized how much he cared about her. Since that day, the two of them have been inseparable.

"How's it going, guys?" she asked, nodding at Sly and Murray.

"Great! The races have been a lot of fun! But I really missed you guys." Murray exclaimed.

"That's good." She said, turning towards Sly. "What about you?"

"Things could've gone better," Sly said, sipping a glass of juice.

"Trouble with Carmelita?" Penelope asked, sitting across from him with a plate of toast.

Sly looked at her surprised, and then smiled. The guess was kind of obvious.

"More trouble than I can handle..." he said, scratching the back of his neck with the tip of his cane. "I guess I just need something to keep my mind off of it for a little while."

"I think I have just the thing for that. It so happens that I have an errand for you." Bentley said, rolling into the room. He seemed more rested, as apparent by a lack of sluggish speech and movements.

"You'll need to break into Interpol headquarters and grab a few things."

Sly sighed before speaking, "So what do I need to get this time?" Breaking into Interpol Headquarters has become so nonchalant as if Sly was simply going to the grocery store.

Bentley rolled to the table where the others were sitting, a mechanical arm holding his breakfast upright, allowing him to sit comfortably before the arm placed it in front of him.

"Well, as you all are aware, for the past few days, I've spent an extensive amount of time researching information regarding our next target. Luckily, I have a contact on the inside. He's set up a case file, just waiting for you to grab it. Once you have that, then we can get started."

"Just waiting for me, huh? It sounds too risky."

"Don't worry Sly, everything is under control." The turtle smiled widely at his remark. A short alarm siren changed Bentley's expression instantly.

"Ahhh! We're late!" the turtle exclaimed. "Sly, you go ahead and head to Interpol's headquarters. I'll have to fill you in on details later."

Having barely finished breakfast, Sly donned his signature cap and matching attire before rushing out the door.

Within minutes, Sly was posed on a nearby building, overlooking Interpol's headquarters. The weather had shifted from a pale, early morning gray to a brightly lit sunny day that was busy with individual clouds. He was soon contacted by Bentley.

"Alright… Sorry about the rush this morning, but we may only have one shot at this."

"So what exactly is going on?" Sly asked.

"In about three minutes, Interpol's power supply will shut down for maintenance. The recently updated security systems will also be momentarily disconnected."

"Um Bentley... They invented something relatively new called a flashlight..." Sly remarked. "I'll also be outnumbered by a billion to one!"

"Your arithmetic skills are terrible, Sly... Besides, there's only one inspector acting as a security guard until the others return. The only problem with that is that Inspector Fox is the one patrolling the hallways."

"And just how is that a problem?" Sly joked. Secretly, Sly was not expecting to run into Carmelita so soon. Would she still hate him for what he did?

"Sly? Were you listening to me?" Bentley interrupted.

"Not at all… What were you saying again?"

_"__He's distracted by something… Maybe this wasn't a good idea…"_ Bentley thought to himself.

"Oh, come on Bentley… Don't give me the silent treatment. I'll listen this time. What's the plan?"

"Alright Sly, if you're willing to do this… I'm just worried about you, is all…"

"Don't sweat it… You and Murray got me covered, right?"

Sly heard Murray's voice over Bentley's. "Yeah Sly, I'm here for you. I can get you out real quick."

"That's right Sly… Murray and I have you covered. Proceed." the turtle said, confidently.

Sly continued and was on top of Interpol headquarters in a minute's time. An air-conditioning unit hummed softly close by. Sly was about to climb the water tower when Bentley urged him to wait.

"Anything wrong, Bentley?"

"Something's wrong... We have to get you out right now before you're spotted!"

"Bentley... Stripes and spots don't go together..."

"Quit clowning around, this is serious... Inspector Fox is missing!"

"WHAT?!" Sly blurted.

"Well, I managed to hack into the security system's core and gain access to the individual cameras that are on this floor."

"And?" Sly asked, growing impatient and concerned.

"I can't seem to locate her." As he said this, Bentley could swear that he heard a sigh of relief from Sly.

"So what you meant to say is that she's not here." Sly asked more calmly.

"I suppose so." Bentley was definitely certain this time that Sly was relieved to hear him say that.

"So, what happens now?" Sly was definitely relaxed now.

"I'll think of something…" Bentley was the one becoming uneasy, now.

"With Carmelita gone, this should be a piece of cake, right?"

"Not exactly… You need a key to obtain access to the file room."

"Well… You failed to mention that…"

"No, Sly… You failed to listen."

"Touchy"

"I think you meant touché, Sly."

"Whatever…"

"The power will be out soon. We'll have to improvise… Are you ready?"

"Ready and patiently waiting…"

Sly stood eager as Bentley counted down the seconds. When he called zero, the air-conditioner stopped its humming and rested peacefully.

"Sly, you are clear to go."

Again, it took mere seconds to crawl through the air vent. He was in the hallway now.

"Hold your position here while I clear a path for you."

"Bentley, there's nothing here..."

"Not a literal path... Ok... A partially literal path... Just wait here a minute."

"Alright..." Sly groaned. "Why is it so dark? I guess these meatheads aren't morning people," he thought aloud, taking note that the curtains of the hall window were drawn closed.

"What was that, Sly?"

"It's just a bit dark in here."

Before Bentley could respond, Sly saw the center row of lights blink once before settling with a decent level.

"Never mind... Great job on the lights, pal."

"But I didn't- Someone else did that..."

"What do you mean? Who else could've done it?"

"Well, these lights were meant to activate in the event of an emergency. They are powered by the building's backup generator. These lights should've never been activated... unless you triggered a silent alarm somewhere... While that is not impossible, I'm assuming that there is something that I am missing. If I can find out what is going on here... The back-up generator is wired to the security system. I have access, but not for much longer."

"What do you see?"

Bentley didn't answer. Instead, Sly's binocucom was changed to a security camera's view.

"That's Detective Winthrop. He's not much of a threat."

Bentley couldn't articulate an answer. Sly paused before actually seeing what Winthrop was doing. He realized why Bentley couldn't speak. He was laughing too hard.

The otter was fast asleep in his chair, a large stain of coffee on the lower portion of his shirt. "He's asleep on the job?" Sly joined Bentley in a laugh before a countdown timer appeared on the bottom corner of the screen. The two didn't stop laughing until the screen went black.

"I needed that…" Bentley was finally able to mumble after a while.

"I think you did too."

"It seems you are not alone after all."

"Alright, I'll continue and… What was I doing again?"

"Picking up a case file… You don't remember?"

"Now I do… Where is that file exactly?"

Sly could hear a few keystrokes from Bentley's computer. "According to my contact, the file is in a secured, yet easily accessible location where Interpol stashes important physical data."

"Meaning what?"

"One of these utility closets is actually the location where secret case files are stored."

"And did your contact happen to know which one?" Sly asked...

"Yes. He sent me blueprints and instructions. According to the building's schematics, there is a large room labeled 'water-closet'. However, there is not enough plumbing running into this room for it to be a bathroom."

"Look like you found some skeletons in the water-closet..." Sly said, smirking.

Out of his many puns, this one definitely made Bentley laugh.

"Clever play on words... Can we get back to business now? Like I said before, the file room is locked. You're going to have to find a key somewhere."

"Maybe Sleeping Beauty has a spare key for me to borrow."

"That's a good place to start."

Sly made his way over to Winthrop's office, where the detective was still completely asleep. As Sly crept closer, he noticed the strong scent of the coffee stain on his shirt.

"That's Carmelita's coffee. What were you doing with it? She must still hate me..."

"Anything wrong, Sly?"

"Nope... It's like taking candy from a baby. A very tired baby..."

"Well, hurry up Sly. You got about 90 seconds before the power returns."

Sly groaned in disproval. "Why didn't you tell me that earlier? Or did you?"

"Actually, I failed to mention that at all. Don't worry; you'll have another 60 seconds before the security system is fully reactivated."

"Let's get moving, then."

With little difficulty, Sly found the 'water-closet'. As expected, this room was not a latrine or a janitor's closet. Inside were multiple files. Some were contained inside their own box, whereas others sat alone in only case folders. Although the room was dimly lit by a single hanging bulb, Sly could identify a large safe that looked oddly familiar.

"I trust you remember the combination?" When Sly didn't answer, Bentley chimed in. "It's the same vault that you broke into three years ago in order to recover your police file. It must have been moved here to be less easily accessible."

Sly sighed softly. "Only three years? It feels like it's been much longer than that."

"Unless it was changed recently, the code may still be 9-3-7."

Sly, with a case of déjà vu, opened the vault with relative ease. He jumped and swung his cane to rotate the wheel on the door of the vault. A large clank was heard as the door accepted the code. The heavy door swung open. Sly's ears perked up in anticipation as he peered inside the vault to see... nothing. Even his calling card from years ago was gone.

"Well, that was..."

Bentley finished the thought.

"Anticlimactic?"

"That's the word I was looking for... Wait… Don't you normally panic right about now?"

"Usually… Except, this time, I expected something to go wrong. It sounded much too straightforward… Hold on... I'll think of something... Now, we know that there was meant to be a file inside this safe... The inspectors who work on this floor have access to it..."

"So you're saying that an inspector could have the case right now?"

"Yes, similar to someone checking out a book at the library before us. All you'll have to do is-"

"Steal the book from someone who already checked it out."

"My thoughts exactly..."

Thinking deviously, Sly placed a calling card down regardless of there being anything to steal and left the room. He replaced Winthrop's keys before double-checking his desk. There was no file there.

Sly went ahead and made rounds, checking if the other's inspectors had locked their doors. There was one office that had been left open in a hurry. Peering into the dimly-lit room, Sly could see a case file on the desk. That must be it. He wasn't mistaken. This office was Carmelita's office. He had been here before. Why was there a case file on her desk and not on another desk? What was she doing? Did she still hate him?

All of these questions came to him at once as he picked up the file.

Sly had questions that he alone couldn't answer. He waited long enough. He had to know. He had to see her again.

Bentley interrupted Sly from his daydream: "Sly, anything wrong? Did you find the file?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yeah, I found it." Sly said.

"Great work Sly, and with time to spare."

As if to prove Bentley's words, all of the lights in the hallway surged once before shining luminously. Sly could hear printers and all sorts of things start up in the offices around him. The small television in Carmelita's office had blinked to live and was playing the snow-storm weather channel.

"Yeah… No kidding. So how do I get out of here?" Sly asked, concerned.

"What do you mean? Can't you go down the fire escape?"

"Not really, Carmelita locked her windows this time. But that's not a problem, I can open them-"

_"__Open that window, and you'll set off the alarm."_

"Bentley? What was that? You said something about an alarm?

"Alarm, what are you talking ab- Sly! Don't touch the window!"

"What is it? What's going on?" Sly asked confused as he nervously backed away from the window.

"The window is connected to the security system... Opening the window will set it off."

"I thought the security system was disabled... Bentley, what's going on here?"

"Hold a minute, Sly... Maybe I can- Sly, Sly... Sly!"

"Bentley?"

_"__He can't hear you right now... Forgive me; I didn't want it to end this way."_

"Who is this? Who are you?"

"Sly... if you can hear me... inspectors... back... elevator..."

"Bentley... What was that?"

"The inspectors are back! They're coming up the elevator! Get out of there!"

"Bentley, I'm running out of time here... What do I do?" Sly was in a panicked state now. He scurried around the hall, looking for a way out. "_I'm trapped... _Sly thought. "_Unless..."_


	6. So Close, So Far

"What do you think he's doing up there? All by himself?" Carmelita nudged her superior.

"He's probably fantasizing about you." Barkley nudged back.

Carmelita shuddered at the thought. "You can't be serious..."

"Oh, I am. All he does is talk about you. All of his notes mention how much he wants to-"

"Please stop. I'm gonna lose my lunch if you keep this up."

Barkley chuckled at this.

"Speaking of..."

"What? Are you actually going to give him a chance?" Barkley retorted.

Carmelita suddenly gagged. "Not even in my dreams. A nightmare, maybe, but that's not what I meant. You said that he wasn't hungry. Are you bringing back some lunch for him?" Carmelita asked, motioning to the box in the inspector's arm.

Barkley laughed at this. When the elevator finally reached their floor, she went to her office and Barkley headed towards Detective Winthrop's office.

The scrawny otter had fallen asleep on the job.

"Winthrop! You no good-" Winthrop jumped back into consciousness immediately at Barkley's booming voice.

"Sir, I wasn't sleeping! Well, maybe I was sleeping... But I was drugged or something!"

Carmelita left the two of them to notice that her office door had been left ajar. She slowly entered the room and found her TV on. Curious, she walked slowly towards it and silenced it. She then began a comprehensive search for what Sly assumed to be the case file that he had taken only minutes ago. He could only watch as she helplessly searched for something that wasn't there. It was probably a bad idea to stay behind. He had made a split-second decision and hoisted himself to the ceiling and held himself up with his arms and legs. As he held himself, the case file was balanced on his back. He could feel something heavier than papers sliding inside of it, threatening to slip away and expose him.

_"__My backpack would've been really useful right about now..."_ he thought. He then smirked as he remembered that he could blame Bentley for that once he got back.

After scrambling around the room for almost a minute, Carmelita finally went to her window and opened it. Sly was directly above her now. He could see her reflection in the window. The expression on her face was one of sadness, not anger. He even noticed a tear running down her cheek like before… He heard her sigh and mumble to herself.

"Where are you, Cooper... You can stop running now..."

But could he? Could he honestly stop? Well, not now, obviously… For now, he waited... The shadows kept him from being seen in the window and he remained silent as a ghost.

Carmelita turned around and leaned on the windowsill. All she had to do was look up and his cover would be blown. Instead, her gaze shifted to her desk. Immediately, she dashed to her desk, looking under it as well as checking the couch cushions. Her quick actions startled Sly and he felt the heavier object slip out of the folder. Moving silently, but quickly, he swung his cane, secretly praying as well as preparing for the moment to run.

But that moment never came. The seemingly unavoidable noise was not heard. Sly had his eyes closed. As he opened them, he saw that his cane had caught the object that fell. It was a necklace of some sort. Sly saw Carmelita, once again searching under her desk for something. Before she stood back up, he was able to swing his cane around and tuck the necklace inside his pouch. The case file remained against his back, balancing on his belt.

"Cooper, you sneaky devil…" He heard her say. There was something off about her tone. She wasn't mad this time… Did this sound joyful for some reason? She cleared her throat, wiped her eyes and ran out of the hall to meet Barkley, who had been lecturing Winthrop all this time.

"Inspector Barkley…"

"Oh, Inspector Fox. Here, perhaps you would be more responsible." He said, handing her Winthrop's keys.

"Inspector..." she tried again.

"I know, right? A teenager has more responsibility than that!"

"Inspector! This is urgent!"

This finally snapped him back to reality. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Cooper's been here… The case-file's missing…"

"What? Missing?"

"Yes sir, He must have gotten the file when the power went out."

"When the power went out? What are you talking about?"

Just then, the Sargent from the computer room came rushing over.

"Inspector… There's something that I-" He paused when he saw Carmelita standing next to him.

"Ah… Um…" Barkley paused, seemingly in deep thought.

"Elias James." Both Carmelita and the Sargent had said this aloud. When Sargent James heard her say his name, that only made him cower a little bit more. Carmelita took notice of this as she finally was able to get a closer look at the Sargent. She expected more of a nerdy-looking, shy person like Winthrop. Instead, she saw a badger wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. His badge was clipped on the shirt's pocket. Rather than the typical bifocal lens eyeglasses, she noticed a pair of stylish sunglasses tucked in his shirt pocket. She still figured him to be the nerdy and shy type, as he cowered when she was nearby. To be put more simply, Sargent Elias James looked like the type of person that studied often in school, but took breaks by tossing a football around. She smirked at the thought that Winthrop probably didn't even know what a football was...

"Right... How come I can't remember that…?" Barkley muttered to himself. He cleared his throat, breaking Carmelita from her trance-like state. "So, what's this I hear about a power outage?"

The Sargent was obvious nervous as he stammered. "Well… It wasn't exactly a power outage… It was more of an intentional reset of the electrical systems." The Sargent was much calmer as he continued. "Inspector, the network system may not have been intentionally targeted by the efforts of the Cooper Gang earlier this morning. It seemed more erratic and disorganized rather than planned."

"So you're saying that the Cooper Gang had something to do with this?"

"Not at all," the Sargent began again, "I intentionally set the electrical system to reset when we left for lunch. That way, I could be certain that no data was compromised."

"So you left the entire floor in an 'intentional' power outage and all of the files at the mercy of anyone who could unlock a door?!" Barkley was growing agitated, now…

"Of course not, why I would ever… I made sure that the security systems were connected to the emergency generator…"

Not being much of a technical person at heart, Carmelita had not been paying much attention. But, as soon as he hinted that the security systems had been operational, she immediately perked into attention.

Acting before thinking, she made a mad dash into the security room, which happened to be Elias James' office as well. Inspector Barkley and the panicky Sargent were trying to keep up. By the time they reached the office, she was there; arms crossed and waiting for the Sargent to unlock the door.

It was an odd moment. The Sargent was practically stumbling as he tried to get his keys. Every few seconds, he would drop his keys and let them retract to his belt. Carmelita was losing her patience. Eventually, the key made contact with the door. As soon as the key was removed, Carmelita burst inside and pranced around the room. After being the first one inside the room for a good minute, she backed off and let the Sargent sit in his desk chair. Carmelita hovered over his left side; while Barkley stood to his right. On the Sargent's desk were a swarm of monitors. One of which was a touch-screen monitor that was directly centered on his desk. Inspector Barkley took notice of the massive amount of equipment in this room.

"How did we afford all of this?" Barkley asked, stunned.

"You didn't, this is all of my own equipment that was donated to your immensely outdated security department."

That caught Carmelita off guard. "This Sargent just back-talked the leading inspector-"

"Good… I got tired of our building being robbed as part of our daily protocol. Now I remember why I hired you…"

"-And he just laughed at it? Something was off here…"

"Now quit your back-talking and play the darn thing… Don't forget who the boss is around here, alright?"

"Maybe not…" Carmelita shrugged away her suspicion.

"S-Sorry Sir…" The Sargent continued his work, opening various windows before flicking them away. "I-I can pull up the footage from when we left earlier today," he stammered.

"Good. Play it." Carmelita said. She said this in her particular take-charge tone. With a nod from Inspector Barkley, the Sargent pressed the key.

The feed played the first few minutes quite normally. Each monitor was displaying a different security camera's view. The first one was displaying the hallway, only a few inspectors were there. The feed on the next screen was Barkley's room, empty. Then Winthrop's room… the otter was spinning in his desk chair.

Barkley uttered a low growl… This did not amuse him.

Another screen displayed Carmelita's room. It showed the same scene from earlier. Barkley and Carmelita were both sitting on her couch. She was taking notes.

"No, no, no, later than that. It must have been right after we left."

The Sargent now moved the hallway's view to the center monitor. He then sped through the next few minutes of footage. He stopped it when he saw that the elevator doors were closing for it to descend.

"Alright, this is right as we left." He said, resuming the video. The footage played nothing for several minutes before the screens went dark.

"This is when the electrical systems- this is when the blackout occurred."

As the trio watched, one of the air-vents in the hallway popped off. It didn't fall to the ground, however; it was guided to a peaceful resting place below the air-vent. A shadowy figure emerged out of the air-vent soon after.

The figure replaced the cover on the air-vent. After doing so, it stood there for several minutes. As it stood, it was gradually fading into the shadow of the hallway. At this point, the only way to know where the figure was standing was by following a faint, but noticeable golden twinkle about shoulder-height.

"What is he doing? I can't tell. Can you brighten this a little?" Carmelita said, whispering into the Sargent's ear.

Noticing a change in her mood, he happily responded: "Certainly."

The Sargent simply tapped a bar on the side. As he scrolled, the video gradually became lighter. He stopped when the trio could clearly depict Sly in his signature blue sweater.

"There he is… that dirty traitor." Barkley grumbled. "We got him now!"

Barkley's excitement was short-lived as it was now obvious to what the figure was doing.

Carmelita couldn't believe it.

Sly Cooper was laughing.

The monitor displayed a few more minutes of the raccoon before the video ended abruptly to a black screen. For a few seconds, the trio remained still in confusion. Carmelita could see a growing look of anger on the Sargent's face.

"What happened? Why did it stop?" Carmelita finally asked the Sargent.

The Sargent opened various windows. All the meanwhile, Carmelita could hear him mumble to himself…

"Laugh at me, will he? Hmph! You better not have wrecked my feed..." A few windows came up before the Sargent exclaimed happily.

"Anything?" Barkley asked, growing impatient and annoyed.

The Sargent took this time to organize himself by straightening his shirt and his hair. "My video file becomes corrupted after this point... I have a feeling that someone accessed the feed while it was live." He stressed this with distinct annoyance.

_"__Men and their toys,"_ Carmelita thought to herself. _"They always cry when they break..."_

"However..." the Sargent said, an almost mischievous grin spreading across his face. The Sargent opened a window on the center screen and opened a command prompt. After typing in a short code, multiple command windows opened across all of the monitors. After about ten seconds of random commands, all of the monitors went blank with the center monitor following suit. One by one, all of the monitors blinked to life. They now showed what they were previously showing. Only now, the time stamp was marked fifteen seconds after the video crashed.

"Impressive... What did you just do?" Barkley asked, bewildered.

"It's nothing, really... I created a program that would launch as soon as an invading system was detected. Once triggered, it duplicated the live feed and stored a copy in a secure location on the computer's drive. As an extra feature, the duplicate feed in place of the live one was designed to mimic a system-wide shut down when accessed. What you see here is the original copy of the footage, as it was meant to be recorded."

As the other two looked on, the Sargent had a great feeling of pride. That quickly went away when he heard the other two laughing at something.

"That's the funniest thing I've seen..." Barkley wheezed.

"So, that's what happened to my coffee..." Carmelita said, wiping her eyes.

One of the monitors in the room displayed Winthrop, asleep in his desk chair. Without even a smile, the Sargent simply cut the feed to a black screen. He then selected the hallway camera and fast-forwarded it until he saw Sly Cooper approach her office. "Inspector Fox, you might want to see this..."

As Inspector Fox watched, Sly slowly entered her office. His movements were slow and cautious. She watched with intent as he picked up the file.

Barkley was no longer impressed.

"Why did you grab 'that' file?" He growled. "Out of all of the files on this floor, you steal mine."

_"__He's right,"_ Carmelita thought to herself. _"Something is definitely strange here..."_

Sly then cautiously stepped towards the window. He reached a hand to unlatch it, but froze. Carmelita watched intently as Sly backed away from the window, drawing his hand back as if the window could bite him.

Audible only to herself, Carmelita whispered: "That's right, I locked the window. Cooper, what are doing?"

The screen showed Sly nervously standing in her office. This was new... Carmelita had never seen Sly like this; panicky, confused, and indecisive. He then bolted out of the office and into the hallway. The Sargent switched the cameras in an attempt to follow Sly as he ran around the floor.

"He's trapped." Barkley commented. "Like a rat in a cage."

The Sargent was having a difficult time tracking Sly with the cameras. All of a sudden, Sly was gone from the monitors.

"I-I lost him."

_"__That a boy, Cooper."_ Carmelita thought to herself.

"What do you mean you lost him?" Barkley growled.

"He headed back into Inspector Fox's office and then he vanished. He must've hid himself somewhere."

_"__That means... He might still be in there."_ Without so much as a warning to the other two, Carmelita burst out of the office and into her own; secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of the raccoon.

Barkley and Sargent James were still in the Security Office.

"Should we tell her?" The Sargent asked his superior nervously.

"No. She'll find out for herself." Inspector Barkley now turned to the Sargent. "Good work, James."

"I'm sorry, Sir. With everything that happened today, I- What was that?"

"Good work. You handled the situation very well."

"Not really... Even after everything I did to help, it all went wrong. They were able to steal your personal case file because of it. Game over..."

Barkley uttered a low growl as he thought about it. He glanced at the Sargent, who had his head down in shame. "Yes, that is a problem. But it can be solved."

"You think so?" The Sargent looked up at Barkley.

Barkley nodded. "Don't beat yourself up over this. There was no way that you could've prepared for what happened."

The Sargent sulked again. "But I did prepare. My failure was in the execution."

Barkley snickered. "You remind me of my brother."

"Brother, Sir?"

"He was a smart fellow, but he always overreacted when he was stressed." This received a nod of agreement from the Sargent. "Well, you're probably hungry now, right?"

"As a matter of fact, I've been so busy today that I never thought of food. Now that you mention it, I'm famished!"

"Well, good. I got you something that you might like." He said, handing the box to the Sargent. "Go relax, eat, and come back ready to tackle this problem head on!"

With a 'Yes, Sir', Carmelita watched as the Sargent dashed towards the lunch room. Inspector Barkley started walking down the hallway, but passed by her office and entered his own.

_"__Strange, I don't remember seeing him at lunch today."_ This created a spark of thought. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen him at Barkley's party last night. If he'd been working here for some time now, he certainly would've been invited. Even if he was going to start work the day after the party, Barkley could've at least mentioned him if not introduce him.

Something was not right. She needed more information.

_"__And I know where to get it."_ As she peered out her office door, she saw that the door to the security office was left open.

Right as she was about to run for it, the Sargent ran back to his office. She hid behind her door as Sargent James closed and locked his door. Afterwards, he casually walked back to the lunch room.

"Darn, Next time." Carmelita said to herself. She walked towards her window and sulked as she had done earlier.


	7. Step Two: Profiling

"That was close. Too close."

Sly was leaning on a brick wall in an alley way. He ran all the way here after escaping through Carmelita's window. In no danger at the moment, Sly rested, catching his breath.

"I must be out of it today. That was so weird. Who was that voice?"

"You mean my voice, Sly?" Bentley called back.

"Hey pal," Sly panted. "Are you saying that you didn't hear it?"

"I heard you, panicking." The turtle said.

"Before that, someone told me that the window was rigged."

"You heard a voice other than mine?"

Sly groaned. "Yes. I heard someone else's voice talking to me."

"Hmm... Come back to the Safe-house. You still have the file?"

"Yeah. I can be there in a few minutes."

"Alright, see you soon."

_"__He thinks I'm crazy."_ Sly thought as he climbed a pipe along the wall.

From the roof-tops, Sly had a remarkable advantage. From here, he could avoid guards as they patrolled the city. Of course, there were no guards here. Sly only saw casual people, living casual lives.

_"__Safe, but boring."_

Out of instinct, Sly looked back over his shoulder.

_"__Why isn't she chasing me?"_ He wondered. If she wanted to, she could catch up to him in an instant.

_"__If she __wanted__ to..."_ For Sly, this meant one thing. It meant that Carmelita no longer wanted anything to do with him. That explained why she wanted him to stop running. There was no need to run if she wouldn't be there to chase him.

_"__Then, why was she crying?"_ It didn't add up.

He shook off the thought for now. It only confused him. It took him a while before he realized that he had been pacing on the same roof-top for several minutes. Once he cleared his head, he arrived to the Safe-house a few minutes later.

Inside the Safe-house, the rest of the gang was waiting for him. Bentley was at the table and Penelope was behind him. She was dressed in her usual mechanic's attire. Her yellow hair was now brushed and wrapped in her signature red bandana. She must have gotten bored because she was leaning against a nearby wall, doing something with her RC controller. Sly sat down and slid the file to Bentley, who started reading it immediately. Curious, Penelope sat down next to Bentley and started reading it too.

While the genius duo looked over the case file, Sly idly sat there. He was about to get up and leave them alone when he remembered about the necklace. He took the chance to examine it. The necklace itself was a simple silver chain. What interested Sly more was the pendant. It was shaped like a crescent moon. It too was silver.

"Hey Bentley," Sly said, catching both his and Penelope's attention. "What can you make of this?"

"Hmm..." Bentley hummed in thought as he was handed the necklace. "The metal is definitely sterling silver. The design is a simple crescent moon shape. Perhaps there is a hallmark to identify it."

"A hallmark? What do you mean?"

"Well," Penelope explained, pausing from reading the file. "It's- Well..." She paused in thought. "It's like a signature."

"A signature? You mean it's a signature of the person that made it?"

"That's exactly what it is, Sly." Bentley said. "The only problem is the maker has horrible penmanship."

"Really?"

Bentley held out the necklace for Sly to see. "There is some engraving along the edge of the shape here. It doesn't seem to be a pattern, so I assume it to be a distinct mark of some sort. It just happens to be illegible."

While Bentley was studying the pendant, Penelope was still focused on the case file. She nudged his arm, handing him a page and pointing at it.

"Hmm. what is this? A personal report? That's unusual." Bentley said, holding the page. He took a glance towards Penelope. She had a look of confusion. From Sly's point of view, he saw her pull out a page, read it, replace it, and pull out another one. The truth was that Penelope had pulled out the same pages multiple times.

"Sly... You didn't drop anything, did you?" Bentley asked, his attention now drawn to the case file.

"Almost. The necklace fell out while I was hiding. I don't think I dropped any papers. Why?"

"Because there are only a few pages in here and they're all personal notes. Take this one for example." He said, adjusting his glasses to read.

"Murray, get in here, big guy." Sly called into the hallway. "You might want to hear this."

Murray came bounding into the room where the other three sat.

"What is it? You guys find something?"

Bentley waited until everyone was seated before he began.

"Here I am, stuck with closing duties. Staplers are filled, doors are locked, and all of the computers are turned off for the night. All I had left to do was move a box of empty folders downstairs to the storage room. Boring... Just as I was about to leave, I heard something from the cells. Someone was here. Fearing a break-out, and my boss' evident overreaction to this, I grabbed a flashlight and checked it out. Nothing was broken or damaged. I checked all of the locks. None of them had been tampered with. I ignored it and left for the night."

Bentley paused to clean his glasses. Sly was becoming impatient.

"That's it?"

"Not necessarily. There are a few more reports, but they all are formatted unprofessionally. There doesn't seem to be anything of use here."

"Well, that was a waste of time..." Sly said, sulking.

"Perhaps not." Penelope said, preparing for her turn to read.

"I checked the cells when no one was looking. I could've done it sooner since no one even noticed me disappearing. I heard the sound again. I knew exactly what it was. Someone coughed. I must have been blind to not see a lump of fur wrapped in cloth. I was alone with whoever this was, so I didn't bother whispering. He must have been sleeping because he moved very slowly. He sounded very annoyed that I woke him. I was curious. How long had he been there?"

"Now we're getting somewhere..." Bentley said, pulling out another page to read.

"All he really needed was some food. All I did was offer leftovers from lunch today and he started worshipping me. He was thanking me, telling me that he hadn't seen such generosity in years. We finally breeched the name barrier. He told me his name was Grimm Hund. Although I told him my name, he always referred to me by my rank."

"Ah, we have a name... Bentley, listen to this." Penelope said, pulling one of the last few pages to read it.

"His plan was insane. He wanted to be free as soon as possible. I suggested that we wait until later tonight. Grimm did not want to wait. He was gone by this morning. I am utterly confused as to how he did it. If he wanted to get out so easily, what kept him from doing so? The night before he went missing was a night full of story-telling. He told me a love story between a 17th century blacksmith and his wife, the current blacksmith's daughter. The romance between the two was so strong that each of them made a wedding gift for the other. They both agreed to make necklaces, but they each had the choice of what to make for the other. The young blacksmith gave his wife a gold necklace with a pendant in the shape of a star. He explained that it represents the first time that they met. According to him, she shined with such radiance and light. Her gift to him was a necklace with the pendant in the shape of the moon. She explained that the moon was a symbol of guardianship, as the moon was guardian of the night. The edges of the crescent moon represented his arms that held her gently, but firmly. He then told me that the blacksmith held on to his wife during their wedding ceremony, promising never to let her go."

"That's actually kind of a cute story." Penelope said.

"Cute, but fake." Bentley stated. "It sounds like just a fairy tale to me."

"Then how do you explain the necklace? Wouldn't that mean that the story's real?" Sly remarked.

"It would be coincidental that two similar people existed some 300 years ago, but we don't have any proof to confirm that the story is 100% accurate. I'll bet that there is no proof at all."

"Really? No proof at all?"

"Yes, really." Bentley remarked, acknowledging Penelope's challenge. "$5 says that you can't find any proof that they existed."

"You're on!" Penelope dashed to her room and came back with Bentley's old laptop. Since Bentley installed a computer-like unit in his chair, Penelope gladly accepted the hand-me-down. She set up in a chair next to him and began her search.

While the two of them had their competition, Sly pulled the case file towards and skimmed through it, pulling a random page and reading it. Unlike the others, this one had a photo attached. It was a picture of an old wolf covered with a large, black cloth. The wolf looked to be in his 60's. Sly could also see that the wolf was wearing torn and faded camouflage shorts. The cloth was open near the wolf's chest, revealing light-gray hair. The wolf's torso was riddled with scars and marks, but there was a distinct scar on his left breast.

In perfect unison, the geniuses exclaimed. Apparently, both of them were successful in their search.

"You first," Bentley said to Penelope. "What do you have?"

"Well," Penelope said. She hit a few more keys, turning on the projector. When the image loaded, it was a painting of a court room. The accused was a young female wolf, no more than 23-years-old. In the picture, she's clinging to her husband's hand as the judge is speaking to another person, most likely a member of the jury.

"I have this." Penelope stated

"That's it?" Bentley teased.

Penelope hit a few more keys and zoomed in on the couple. With more detailing, they were able to depict a gold necklace on her neck. The shape was blurred, but the color was correct. The husband had a similar necklace, only his was silver.

Penelope read the inscription that accompanied it: "Trial & Conviction."

"That's not enough proof. We don't know who those two are."

"I have one more thing." Penelope said, changing the image. The image of a trial was replaced with something different. A single tree stood out in the image. The leaves of the tree were different shades of orange and brown and were starting to fall. A lone figure was lying below the tree, resting. This painting also showed a necklace on the wolf's neck. Like the previous image, his was silver. But unlike the previous one, the shape of the necklace was clearly visible. The necklace that was around his neck held a pendant shaped like the crescent moon. Beside the sleeping wolf, a stone sat out-of-place. In front of that was another necklace. This one was golden and was shaped as a circle with a star in the center.

The inscription below this photo read: "A Resting Place."

"My source tells me that both paintings were done hundreds of years ago."

"So someone happened to be there to paint this image? Or did he happen to be sleeping there when someone wanted to paint a simple tree?" Bentley remarked.

"I know, the details are sketchy... So what do you have?"

"Well," Bentley said, connecting to the projector. "I have an auction in France that proves that the silver necklace was sold about 20 years ago. The details for the auction say that the necklace belonged to a German prisoner of WWII. The rest of it, I can't translate. I also have a receipt of a golden necklace that was sold from a pawn shop in Massachusetts about 5 years ago.

"That doesn't prove anything! They still could've lived 300 years ago!"

"You don't even have a name to prove that!"

"Neither do you!"

Sly decided to break up the argument by giving the table a solid tap with his cane.

The duo stopped to turn towards Sly. Murray bolted upright from his chair.

"What'd I miss?" The hippo exclaimed. Apparently Bentley and Penelope's story-time had put him to sleep.

"Sly, would you mind filling everyone in?" Bentley said as Sly set his cane back on his chair.

Pulling a page from the file, Sly began to read:

"I doubted that his story was true, that it was just a story and nothing else. I went through the files and pulled his out. (No one even cared because the case was so old.) An old personal profile said that Grimm was arrested after WWII. I did some searching and I finally found a WWII antiques auction. One of the items up for sale was the necklace. Well, I didn't know if it was _the_ necklace or not. If he only waited, I would've known."

"Wow..." Penelope gasped.

"There's more." Sly read on:

"I bought the necklace anyway. He seemed to have taken my advice. No one could find him. His name did sound German, but he denied ever being German. Where ever he is, I hope he went home. Maybe one day we could catch up like old friends."

"That's impossible," Bentley stated. "If the necklace did belong to Grimm, then that would imply that he is..."

"Over 300 years old." Penelope finished the comment.

"Impossible."

"Bentley... It's possible... You know that." Sly said. "We all know that."

Bentley frowned, definitely knowing what he was talking about. "It can't be possible... How could another immortal pass right under the public's eye?"

"Well... He'd have to be made of metal, right?" Murray said, getting everyone's attention.

"Correct. That's the only way that we know of."

This prompted Sly to pull out the photo of Grimm. "That also means that he can't actually age, right?"

"Again, correct. Signs of aging would render immortality useless."

"Well, maybe we have something different on our hands. Something new," Sly said, passing the photo to Bentley.

"Bentley, they're on to something." Penelope said, urging him.

"They are indeed. This photo proves that something is indeed strange. But Sly, do you really want to do this?"

"If there's any connection between Grimm Hund and Clockwerk, then we need to find out what it is and stop it. Please, I need your help." Sly said, placing a hand onto the table.

"Count me in! I'll pound this old dog into the dirt." Murray said excitedly, joining Sly's hand.

"That's great, but where do we start?" Penelope commented.

"Good question. We'll figure it out. We always do." Bentley said, placing a hand on the table. "I'm in."

"In that case, I'm going too. You're not leaving me behind." Penelope squeaked, resting her hand on Bentley's.

"The Cooper Gang's back in action!" Sly said.


	8. The Badger is a Mole!

Carmelita paced anxiously around her office. Her mind was busy with so many theories.

_"__What if James is a mole?"_ The details weren't adding up for her. She needed more information. Poking her head out of her office, she would be able to quickly sneak in and check his computer. The problem was that James hadn't returned to his office yet. Maybe he was still eating? For now, she had to wait.

If there was a word to describe Carmelita, 'patient' would not be that word.

Making sure that no one was around, she snuck across the hallway to James' office. She knew it was locked, but she didn't care. Besides, she just remembered where the spare key was.

Thanks to Winthrop falling asleep on the job, all of his keys, except his office key, were taken from him and placed in the care of a more responsible agent.

Lucky for Carmelita, she happened to be that agent.

She found a key and tried it. No luck. The key didn't even fit. In fact, none of them worked.

_"__Damn, now what?"_ She was determined now. Answers were just on the other side of that door.

_"__If he is a mole, I can't blow his cover. Whatever he's planning isn't finished. If I expose him, he'll run."_ Was she seriously gonna do this?

She walked off to the lunch room, where Elias James was still eating something. He was rather surprised to see her.

"Oh. Inspector! Is something wrong?"

_"__He has a guilty conscience? This will be too easy."_ She thought.

"Well, there's something that I've been meaning to ask."

"Like what, Inspector?"

"Call me Carmelita or Ms. Fox. You don't have to call me Inspector."

"Ms. Fox, what can I help you with?" The Sargent asked again.

"Well, I..." she paused. "I wanted to know what you're eating. It looks so delicious."

"Is that really what you came here to ask me?"

"Sort of; it's just that I didn't see you at lunch today and your box isn't from the restaurant that we went to."

"That's because I didn't go to lunch at all. This is my lunch."

"Why not? You missed out on delicious enchiladas!"

"And a delicious analeptic shock. I'm allergic to a seasoning that they use."

Sure enough, Carmelita had mistaken an EPI pen in the Sargent's shirt pocket for a regular pen.

_"__Damn... Alright, I still have one more trick up my sleeve."_

"Any other questions, Ms. Fox?"

"What do you do in your spare time?"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, are you a party guy?"

"What?"

"Do you go out dancing?"

"Not really..." The Sargent was getting uncomfortable now.

"Oh, come on... The ladies must be dragging you to the dance floor."

"Unlikely considering the fact that I'm engaged."

_"__Well, that made a wrong turn..."_

"Engaged?"

"Well, I've been in a long-distance relationship for a few years now. We've never actually met. When we do meet, I'm gonna propose."

"How sweet! Are you gonna take her out to dinner?"

"Maybe. You think she'll like that?"

"Oh, sure. You should go out dancing too!"

_"__Now we're back on track."_

"But I can't dance."

_"__Damn it!"_

"What?"

"I don't know how. I didn't want to show up at the party last night like a date-less loser."

"You wouldn't be the date-less loser at all. You'd just be date-less."

"Seriously? He went too?"

"Yep. He got so drunk that he thought I was Ms. Scarlet."

The Sargent laughed at the joke. "I used to love that game."

They both became silent for a moment.

_"__Ok... New plan."_

"What if I taught you?"

"What?"

"What if I taught you how to dance?"

"Right now?"

"Just a few steps."

"I guess. I heard that you know how to waltz."

"Yeah, everyone must've heard that." Carmelita frowned. "Come on, stand up."

With guidance from Carmelita, the two managed a few rough steps before she stopped. He was true to his word; he may never have danced in his life.

"That's basically it. I think you'd be a great dancer."

"Well thank you, Ms. Fox."

"Oh, one more thing." Carmelita said.

"And what could that be?"

"Good luck on your proposal."

With that, Carmelita turned and walked out of the lunch-room, passing Winthrop along the way. Apparently he had an appetite now.

_"__He seems nice. Not what I expected at all."_

When Winthrop was out of sight, she quickly turned towards Elias James' office.

_"__Maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe I'm wrong."_ She thought, producing his keys from her jacket pocket.

_"__One thing's for certain... The poor guy is gullible."_ She unlocked his door and dashed inside before anyone could see.


	9. Step Three: Tracking

"What are you doing now?" Penelope asked.

"Getting travel arrangements ready." Bentley replied, not taking his eyes from the laptop monitor.

"Travel arrangements? How do you know where we're headed already?"

"I don't. But you do."

She paused for a moment in thought. "Massachusetts?"

"Salem, to be exact."

Penelope looked confused for a moment. Bentley was about to speak, but she silenced him.

"No, no. Don't tell me. I think I got it."

"You do?"

"Yeah... It's actually quite simple. Starting with what we have, we know that Grimm Hund was arrested in France in suspicion of being a German spy. The fact that he was wearing a U.S. uniform leads me to assume that he either originated from the United States, or actually was a German spy who tried to deceive French soldiers. Is there something I'm missing?"

"Actually, I did more research and I found a report that can be traced to a medic's tent in Germany. The nurse was charged when it was found out that one of her patients was a spy."

"I see. That tells me that she treated someone whom she didn't believe to be a spy. Someone with a German-sounding name, perhaps?"

"Very good..."

"I'm not done. The fact that he was wounded on the battlefield, the fact that he was brought into Germany, and the fact that he was suspected of being a spy leads me to assume that he wasn't a German soldier at all. The fact that France suspected him of being a spy from Germany tells me that he wasn't a French Soldier either. The only other clue is his American uniform, which tells me that he was an American soldier."

Bentley nodded in agreement.

Penelope continued. "That's your evidence. There's still more. The paintings that I found were done by different artists... However, one thing that connects the two is their geographical location. That happens to be the state of..."

"Massachusetts." They said in perfect unison.

"But why Salem?"

"Well... I may have cheated a bit, but I Google'd 'Massachusetts' and '17th Century'. One of the results was a woman by the name of Mira Canis who was accused of witchcraft in Salem.

"I think I got it. There was a name and a date carved on the stone in the second painting. Mira Canis died on October 13, 1692. Her husband apparently died in prison. The name of the husband-"

"Grimm Hund." Bentley finished the thought.

"Brilliant. We're chasing after a ghost."

"Technically, no. Grimm Hund is still alive. Maybe even immortal."

"But why?"

"That is something I can't figure out just yet. Clockwerk fueled his immortality with the hatred of Sly's family. I don't understand what would keep Grimm Hund alive."

"You said he was wounded in Germany, so maybe he's not completely immortal yet."

"That means that-"

"That means we can stop him." Sly said, startling them.

"How long have you been standing there?" Bentley groaned.

"For a few minutes... You guys didn't hear or see me come in?"

"No. You're really talented with your footwork." Penelope teased, causing Sly to perk up his ears. Bentley also gave her a look of confusion.

Before she even noticed, she retorted with another comment: "That's actually very creepy. Can you please not do that?" She even shivered as if it gave her goose bumps.

Bentley's look of confusion swapped immediately to a look of concern. "It's ok, Penelope; it takes a while to get used to something like that." He said, grasping her hand.

"Thanks Bentley, I'll be fine." She said, stroking his hand in hers. Her gaze immediately switched to the bag in Sly's hand. "What's that?"

"New outfits, well, for me and Murray anyway."

"You didn't get me anything?" Penelope said with mock disappointment

"Bentley suggested that we pick our own clothes." Sly said.

"That way we can eliminate any similarities in our wardrobe." Bentley finished the thought.

"So why did you grab something for Murray?" Penelope said, this time, confused.

"Don't tell him, alright?" Bentley said.

"But why-" Penelope said, turning towards Sly

"Don't look at me, I don't even know." He said.

Penelope walked over to Sly. "Well what did you get him?"

Sly pulled out a long, hooded robe. "This. It took me a while to find it."

Penelope only needed minutes before she nodded in understanding. "Alright, I won't tell him."

"Me neither." Sly grinned, still not knowing what he shouldn't tell him.

"Tell me what?" Murray came into the room, startling Bentley and Penelope. Sly didn't even flinch.

"You're getting good at that, pal." Sly said, smirking.

"Thanks Sly, but that's your thing. I'd rather face my foes head-on. It's more fun that way." Murray said, peering into the bag. "Sly! You got outfits already?"

Whatever secret Bentley had, it must not have been important. After receiving a nod from Bentley, Sly handed him the robe.

"This is a monk's robe, what's this for?"

"Well, I wasn't going to tell you, but..." Bentley started. "In order to help us with the mission, I've enlisted the aid of a certain colleague of ours. Well, more like invited..."

"Who?"

"The Guru of the Stone."

"My master? MASTER!" Murray exclaimed happily. In his excitement, he picked Sly up by the waist and did a full turn, before setting the now-stunned raccoon down.

"I see why you wanted to wait..." Sly muttered.

"It didn't seem like a bad idea at the time, but he might have blown his cover later. Your disguise gives you the opportunity to do that."

"I get it... A monk can call out for his master and no one would care." Murray nodded.

"Exactly. Not the most subtle of disguises, but it wouldn't be difficult to keep up." Bentley agreed.

"What would've been your choice, Murr?" Sly asked.

Murray decided it would be better to illustrate his costume. He did so by posing into various stances, each of them purposely showing off his muscular arms. "My choice would've been the masked wrestler from Spain, known as 'El Muro!'"

"And that's a more subtle disguise?" Penelope giggled.

"Never said it was," Murray grinned. "But I see your point, Bentley. It would look odd."

"So what are you gonna be this time?" Sly asked Penelope.

Bentley had another short laugh. This time, the others knew exactly what was so funny. They all had a laugh before Penelope finally spoke.

"I'll probably be what I was last year." This resulted in another wave of laughter. When they finally settled, Sly sighed noticeably.

"Sly, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, my Dad always loved this time of the year." Another wave of laughter began. This one, however, ended very quickly.

"Sly? You alright, Pal?" Even Murray was worried about his friend's recent behavior.

"I'm fine, guys. Thanks."

They had about a minute of silence before Bentley's computer beeped. As he stared at the screen, an expression of horror began to form on his face.

Penelope saw it first. "Bentley? What's wrong?"

"Im-Impossible!"

Sly noticed that his friend was now transfixed by the screen. "Bentley, I don't like that face..."

Without answering, Bentley started franticly typing. Penelope leaned over his shoulder out of curiosity. Normally, Bentley wouldn't allow her to do this, but he was much too busy to care at the moment. It wasn't long before she showed a similar expression on her face.

Murray remained silent, unsure as what to do. Sly was getting impatient.

"What is it? What's going on?" Sly asked, definitely nervous.

"They're trying to track us." Penelope answered for him.

"Who?" Murray finally spoke.

"Interpol, and three guesses as to who is doing this." Bentley groaned.

"No, not Carmelita. She'd never go this far." Sly tried to reassure his friend.

"He's right, if she wanted to track us, she would've done it a long time ago." Penelope said.

"Not helping... Or maybe you are... Sly, when you headed back this morning, you said you heard another voice?" He said, not looking away from the screen.

"Yeah."

Bentley increased his frantic typing. The team could hear him mumble. "Two can play at that game... I hope you've come armed for this war."

Standing behind him, Penelope placed her hands on his shoulders, silently urging him. "Come on Bentley, show this guy that you mean business!"

In this battle, an unknown attacker had the first strike. Bentley had this opportunity to block. Bentley's defenses must have scared his opponent. There was no response.

"Alright, that was close..." Bentley sighed

"How did they find us?" Penelope asked

"They didn't find us yet, but I have an idea of how this happened."

"Bentley..." Sly started to say.

"There is no way that Carmelita could've done it. I always make sure that my signal is scattered among the nearest network locations. They must have kept those locations logged and checked for any similarities."

"It's over, right?" Penelope asked.

Sadly no, the war was not over. Bentley only angered his opponent. The unknown attacker struck again, with more ferocity. Bentley fought the attack to the best of his abilities, but he was struck down. Before Bentley's monitor blinked for the last time, Bentley issued a wild strike that hit hard enough to stun his attacker. Both warriors were wounded in this war; the unknown attacker may have overpowered Bentley's defenses, but not before Bentley struck a single, crippling blow to his opponent. Bentley's laptop now sat there, black and lifeless.

"G-Guys, time to go..."

"W-What?" Penelope stood stunned.

Murray didn't need another moment. He ran to pack up the van. Within minutes, the rest of the team was loaded into the van. Bentley, however, was still in the same expression that he had before. Eventually, he started moving. He was able to pack his things with the rest of the gang. The laptop, however, remained where it was. He stopped as if to say goodbye to an old friend. He then suddenly started to take the laptop apart.

This caught Penelope's attention. "What are you doing? It's useless now..."

"I can save it. I just need to remove the network adapter."

"But Bentley..."

"I can rebuild it! I won't leave it behind. Almost... Done!" He pulled out a small device that was now blinking bright red lights. Within seconds, the laptop was closed up and packed away.

Fifteen minutes after the attack, neither warrior could be seen. The battlefield was empty.


	10. Questions & Answers

_"Alright, where to start?"_ Carmelita looked around the room, searching for some answers.

She somehow knew that something was wrong. This Sargent was a pretty suspicious character. What was he hiding?

_"Whatever it is, I'll find it."_ She thought to herself. Looking around the room, she came across a photograph of the Sargent. There was an inscription that filled with various signatures. One of them read 'Elias 13'. The photo was of him in a soccer uniform. By the looks of it, his team had just won a game.

_"Not bad, not bad at all."_ She practically amazed herself: earlier she guessed that he was somewhat athletic. Turns out she was right.

Her best bet would be the computer.

Luckily, the video feed from this morning was still left open.

She sat down and rewound the feed. There was something that he skipped over, but what?

Now, she may not have been a computer genius, but she was no novice either. She was actually a quick learner.

Besides, the controls were easy and the monitor was touch-screen. The feed stopped shortly after the video crashed. She saw everything, right?

Actually, no. Before Sly even headed to her office, he made a different path directly to Winthrop's office.

_"Why go there?"_

She watched dumbfounded as Sly swiped keys from the still-sleeping Detective and walked over to another room.

_"The file room? How did you know about that?"_

The video kept confusing her as he went to a safe and opened it, revealing nothing.

_"Absolutely pointless, Cooper. There's nothing in there."_

It was then that Sly replaced Winthrop's keys before heading to her office. The rest happened as it did before.

This struck her as odd. Why would he waste time like that? The file was on her desk the entire time. Unless... whatever he wanted was in the safe. The file that she had was never in the safe. The files were mixed up!

Did that really matter? It looked like Cooper found the file that he had been looking for.

_"More questions, less answers." _She thought.

She remembered something: there was a piece of footage that cut to black screen. This footage was easily found; it was the original file for the security feed for that day.

It began as it normally happened. She saw everyone just as they were. She noticed a pair of headphones on the desk. She placed them on and watched the feed, switching the audio around.

One of the feeds caught her attention. This was Winthrop from earlier, singing to himself.

Even though the song was about her, Carmelita wasn't amused. Winthrop was tone deaf and the lyrics disgusted her in more ways than one.

_"Creep. Not a chance..."_ Disgusted, she threw off the headphones. She didn't see what happened when they hit the keyboard.

As she watched, Winthrop got up from his chair and walked out. This must have been when he came to tell them that it was lunch time. He came back and closed his door. She saw him get ready to leave until he stopped. He noticed the extra coffee cup on his desk and drank it.

Carmelita remembered that since Sly brought coffee for her this morning, she never had gotten the cup that was supposed to be hers.

_"Now he knows what coffee I like. That freak."_

Her expression soon changed when she noticed that after a second sip, Winthrop started to sway like the night before. As she watched with growing horror, the detective collapsed and passed out in his chair.

Winthrop was drugged! This was no laughing matter. He drank a cup of coffee that was meant to be hers. Had it not been for Cooper's apology, she would've been drugged this morning.

There was something else. Soon after Winthrop collapsed, the hallway grew dark. This was exactly as she had seen it before. She also recalled that the Sargent used a command on the side of the video to raise the brightness.

Trying it now, the video showed no change in the lighting. In fact, it didn't change until the exact moment passed when the Sargent raised the light level earlier.

Carmelita took a moment to piece this part of the puzzle together. Further review of all of the screens showed that they all had gotten brighter at exactly the same time.

Then she saw it. In one lucky glance in one of the monitors, she saw that the center row of lights were on... In a blackout... When Cooper had barely entered the building... Someone had to be here to turn them on. The Sargent didn't just go somewhere else for lunch, he never left the building at all!

Was he a mole? A man on the inside would be able to watch and control everything from the Sargent's position. But why would he clearly show Cooper on the monitors by lightening up the building? He's probably a scum-bag that wanted to blame Cooper for the theft, just to cover his own tracks.

This was it. She had proof that something was wrong, but she couldn't prove what it was.

All she needed to do was show Barkley the evidence and he'd question it for her.

She had the evidence... On the Sargent's computer! That's questionable enough, right?

"ARCHER Program Has Been Activated." The monitor displayed.

_"Wait, what is going on?"_

All of the screens flashed to black. When they came back, they showed a map of the city.

"Locating Recent Signals..." The screen now showed. "Common Anomalies Detected. Seven Possible Source Locations Detected. Running Command: ARROW."

At this time, Carmelita heard the lock on the door jiggle.

_"Crap!"_

"Oh, right... I locked it."

_"Thank heavens."_

"My keys are missing... I had them earlier today."

_"Crap! Go away! Go look for them somewhere else!"_

She heard him walk away, possibly to the lunch room.

She got up and ran to the door.

"Command Failed: Unknown Error." The computer said. She never noticed.

Once she was out of the door, she locked it and ran back to her own office. She made it just in time to see Sargent James come back to his office.

He opened the door and walked inside.

_"A spare key? Where did he get one?"_

Only minutes later, she saw the Sargent poke his head from his room. Shrouded by her office door, she heard a sigh of relief as the door closed. This sigh was soon followed by a scream of protest.

"Inspector Barkley! Inspector Fox! Come quick!"

They met at the Sargent's office. Barkley was there first. "Sargent James, what's wrong? I heard you screaming."

"My computer is fried. The entire system was compromised. I've lost everything."

_"No... My proof!"_

All of the monitors displayed a similar image. They showed a green symbol with a similar shade of green as a background color.

"Bentley..." Carmelita said, not realizing that she spoke aloud.

"The Cooper Gang? They did this?" Barkley growled.

"Inspector." The Sargent called out.

"What is it, James?"

"My computer was able to pinpoint their location before it was erased. I can send the coordinates to you by text message or something."

"Alright. See if you can recover your computer. I don't want the entire building to be vulnerable as well."

"I'll get it back online, Sir." The Sargent replied.

"Inspector Fox, You'll come with me to investigate the scene." Barkley said.

"Yes Sir."

The two of them arrived to an empty building. Barkley wasn't happy. His mood changed when he found the case file stashed in a backroom.

"Lost him again! He could be anywhere by now!"

Carmelita noticed that there was something blinking on the table. She pointed it out to Inspector Barkley, who shrugged.

Knowing exactly who to ask, she used her radio and contacted HQ.

"Inspector Fox to Sargent James, Over."

"Inspector Fox, Sargent James responding. What did you find? Over."

"I don't know what I'm looking at. It's small and blinking red lights. Over."

"He's removed his network adapter. That's what my computer tracked down. Over."

"So we have nothing..."

"Inspector Fox," Barkley said, "You might want to see this." He pointed to a small, folded piece of paper on the table. It was addressed to her.

She pulled over a chair and began to read it:

...

My Dearest Carmelita;

Being unable to talk to you is driving me insane. I don't want us to spend the rest of our lives as enemies. Give me a chance to explain myself. There's a new Michael **Bay** movie that's coming out this year. The poster **stated** that the movie is premiering **Tomorrow at 5:00 AM.** Please don't be late.

-Sly

P.S. It would be more romantic if you came alone.

...

She noticed that the ink had been purposely written over certain words, making those words more noticeable.

"What is it Inspector?"

"It's a bread crumb. I'm meant to follow."

"You know where he's going?"

"I have an idea."


	11. The Name Game

The plane landed in Boston, Massachusetts at around 4:50 the next morning. Many passengers of different species got off the plane. One of which was a turtle who was using a wheel chair. He was being pushed by a female mouse who was wearing glasses.

"Ah, Paris was wonderful, eh Penny? I miss it already." the turtle said.

"It was wonderful, Ben. Why did we ever leave?" Penny replied.

"The hotel bill got too expensive. We couldn't afford to stay another night." Ben remarked.

"Hey, I could've paid it if you'd let me." Penny argued.

"You could've told me that sooner. We'd be eating breakfast under the Eiffel Tower right now." Ben snapped back.

The couple didn't watch where they were going and nearly ran into a hippo who was wearing a monk's robe.

"Hold on there you two. Life is better experienced slowly." He said, smiling.

"Sorry 'bout that. We'll take that advice from now on."

In the middle of the airport, a short, elderly koala strolled around. Out of everyone here, his attire was most odd. He was wearing a distinct t-shirt that made him look like a tourist from New York. His staff, however, looked nothing like the Statue of Liberty's torch. The koala walked around eagerly as if he was looking for someone. His student found him first.

"Master!" the Monk shouted excitedly, picking up the koala and putting him on his shoulders. The koala pointed out the turtle and mouse next to him. He'd seen these two before.

"It's great to see you too, Guru. How's New York these days?" Ben asked.

The old koala spoke excitedly to this turtle, waving his arms in the air as if expressing the size of something large. Then his tone changed, as if slightly disappointed. Everyone except his student laughed at this. The koala looked down at his student, confused.

"New York was definitely nicknamed 'The Big Apple,' but not quite for that reason..." Penny explained.

Certain that he recognized them, the koala expressed his joy in seeing old friends. He chattered again, this time in a soft, curious tone towards the two of them. Penny blushed. Ben smiled and took her hand in his.

"Don't worry Guru, we're still together." Ben said.

The Guru smiled and nodded at his friends, then at his student. He spoke again, somehow causing the other three to grow silent.

The Monk broke the silence. "My master informs me that you two are in need of transportation."

"Yeah, it's hard to go anywhere when I have to drag this guy around." Penny said, teasing him.

"Oh... I haven't thought about that..." Ben said, tapping the arm of his wheel-chair. "If it's not too much of an inconvenience..."

"Oh not at all, my master always tells me to be generous."

The koala directed his student's attention to the bleachers, where a raccoon with a blue baseball cap and a gym bag was sitting. When they walked over to him, it appeared that the raccoon was crying.

"What blue thoughts make these rivers from your eyes?" the Monk asked.

The raccoon looked up, still sad and tears still in his eyes. "My girlfriend left me. She hates me, I know it."

The koala on the Monk's shoulders asked his own question.

The raccoon sadly replied: "How do I know? I asked her to be here. She never showed up."

Taking over the conversation, the koala replied again. This comment was helping the distressed raccoon.

"You think she still loves me?"

The koala replied again, this time with certainty.

"Thanks. You always know what to say."

The Monk jumped back into the conversation. "Is there any way that we can brighten your rainy day, friend?"

"Well, I don't have a ride anywhere."

Offering his hand, the Monk offered to drop him off wherever he wanted to go.

Taking up on that offer, he met up with Ben and Penny. Once he heard their names, he laughed at a joke that only he knew the punch-line to. Putting that aside, The Guru and the Monk lead them out to the front, where they hailed three similar taxis with little difficulty.

One taxi was meant for a disabled rider. Obviously this one was meant for Ben. Penny rode with him. The next taxi could barely fit a large hippo and a small koala. This left the last taxi for the raccoon and the gym bag.

If she only turned around sooner, the scarlet fox would've seen him sitting alone. For the past hour, she'd been busy with a phone call. Now, the receiver dangled as she rushed outside. As soon as she left the doors, she saw his taxi speed away. She was about to chase the taxi, but that was before this one joined two others. Worse enough, the taxis split in different directions and his was out of sight before she could reach it.


	12. Step Four: Home Away From Home

The team set up the Safe-house in a hotel in Salem, Massachusetts. Once the taxis drove far enough away, the Guru released them from his grasp. The team divided themselves into three groups, each group taking a room. Murray and The Guru took a two-bedroom suite. Bentley and Penelope shared a luxury suite that also served as the team's meeting place. Sly took a small, single room for himself. The team took the rest of the day to recover from the late-night flight as well as set up for the master plan.

"That was some fast thinking, Bentley." Sly commented, retrieving his cane from the gym bag.

"Don't thank me. Everyone did their own part. Even _your_ performance was praiseworthy, Sly."

"It was nothing... really." Sly said. "You know how improv works; you use what you have and make the rest up."

"Yeah..." Bentley said. "Alright everyone, here's the scoop: if you need to leave the building for emergencies, I want you guys to leave by the fire-escape. I've temporarily silenced the alarm on this floor, so it won't trigger when we open the door. When we leave to complete the mission, I want all of us to leave in costume at separate times. We'll choose a rendezvous point and continue from there. Now my final piece of briefing is to recommend that everyone get a few more hours of sleep before engaging in recreational activities for the rest of the day. Also, after each meeting here, I want each of you to partake in such activities until night. Until we gather enough data to launch an attack plan, I want this to be the regular schedule."

"Seriously?" Sly said, confused and excited. "You want us to relax?"

"You can call it that, or you can call it 'defining your alibi as a hotel guest.' It ensures that the management and other residents don't question why five guests checked in without enjoying the luxurious accommodations."

"In other words," Penelope said. "Subtle and quiet won't work here, guys. As far as anyone knows, we're on vacation!"

"You planned this, didn't you?" Sly grinned in excitement.

Bentley nodded in agreement. "I want all of us to meet here at 0900 hours tomorrow, deal?" He asked.

No one refused.

The following conversation took place at 11:46 AM.

(ConstableAlias has joined the chat room.)

ConstableAlias: Give me an update. How are things going?

(WiseWizard144 has joined the chat room.)

WiseWizard144: What's wrong with using code words? Didn't we want to be secretive about this?

ConstableAlias: Secretive? So does hacking into our security system and disabling it with a large, flashy emblem count as being secretive?

WiseWizard144: I had to act fast. Otherwise, we would've been tracked down.

ConstableAlias: But you _were_ tracked down. We found your hideout. Thanks for leaving the case file behind.

WiseWizard144: It was practically useless BTW; there was little factual information of any value.

ConstableAlias: What else do you want from me?

WiseWizard144: Anything you can give us. We need more info on Grimm Hund's location.

ConstableAlias: ...

WiseWizard144: What is it?

ConstableAlias: Nothing... This plan is so screwed. I think we need to pull the plug.

WiseWizard144: Not now! We've come all this way into the U.S. We're not turning back now.

ConstableAlias: How do you know Grimm's in the U.S.?

WiseWizard144: We researched some information and determined Grimm's hometown. We still don't know if he's here or not.

ConstableAlias: Hometown?

WiseWizard144: Salem, Massachusetts.

ConstableAlias: Amazing.

WiseWizard144: We've come this far. We can still pull it off.

ConstableAlias: You're right. If we stop now, everyone will get suspicious.

WiseWizard144: How will you lead Inspector Fox to our location?

ConstableAlias: What do you mean?

WiseWizard144: The case file didn't help us at all. She'll have no leads.

ConstableAlias: I thought the love letter was your idea. Inspector Fox is already in Massachusetts.

WiseWizard144: Love letter? I didn't write a love letter.

WiseWizard144: But I know who did...

ConstableAlias: You don't mean...

WiseWizard144: Yes, I do. He must have tipped her off in the letter.

ConstableAlias: I have a copy of the letter with me. The words 'bay', 'state' and a time and date of 'Tomorrow at 5:00 AM' are written in bold. It doesn't make any sense. There are no Michael Bay movies premiering at that time.

WiseWizard144: Well, I know for sure that I didn't write it. It's too simple.

ConstableAlias: So does that mean everything's set?

WiseWizard144: There's something missing. He led her to Boston, Massachusetts; how does she know that he's in Salem?

ConstableAlias: Good point. We caught a lucky break with that love letter.

WiseWizard144: We might not be so lucky again.

ConstableAlias: True...

WiseWizard144: Any ideas?

ConstableAlias: One, it's not very subtle. It could even expose the entire operation.

WiseWizard144: I'm out of ideas. Go for it.

ConstableAlias: I'm going to give a copy of your hard drive to her.

WiseWizard144: ...

ConstableAlias: Think about it: She'll have all of your research data. There's no way that she couldn't figure it out.

WiseWizard144: But... The entire plan is on my computer. She'll know what building we are in. She could swarm the building!

ConstableAlias: I don't think so. She followed the instructions on the letter. She waited at the airport alone. She could've locked down the airport and searched it.

WiseWizard144: She was that close the entire time!? Wait, you said the letter specified 5:00 AM.?

ConstableAlias: Yes, Inspector Fox called me at 4:45 but she suddenly left a few minutes after five. Her instructions were to meet Cooper and to come alone. What's wrong?

WiseWizard144: We arrived at 10 'til 5 and left around the same time as she did. I couldn't say where he was before we met up with him. He was the one who insisted that we separate and meet later in the airport. He must've gone looking for her. Poor guy...

ConstableAlias: Maybe this was a bad idea. We're tearing these two apart.

WiseWizard144: We'll have to make it up to them somehow.

ConstableAlias: Agreed. I'll arrange a drop off point for the hard drive.

WizeWizard144: Negative. I'll send it digitally. Let's make it look like you recovered data off of my computer before it crashed.

ConstableAlias: Good idea. I'm looking forward to it.

(ConstableAlias has left the chat.)

(WiseWizard144 has left the chat.)

(This chat is now closed.)


	13. Lost & Found

"It's no use. I've lost him." Carmelita said bleakly. Since his taxi left, she has been walking around town. It proved ineffective. She knew that he was out of range, but that wasn't exactly what was bothering her.

"He probably hates me. He asked me to do this for him and I couldn't do it."

Travelling nowhere specific, she continued to walk. "What do I tell him? 'Sorry Inspector, but I didn't see Cooper until he drove away.'"

What else could she do? She didn't know exactly where she was. She didn't know where she was supposed to go.

That all changed when a taxi pulled up next to her. The driver was incredibly polite. "Need a lift Ma'am? You look like you're lost."

"Is it that obvious? Actually, I am lost. I have no money though."

"That's no problem. Get in. Where can I take you?"

"Police station."

"You in some trouble?"

"No, I soon will be."

As they drove off, the driver was making small talk.

"So... What brings you to Boston? Business or Pleasure?

"A little of both actually."

The driver's radio came on. "Come in 7684."

"7684 responding. What's wrong Billy?"

"I told you not to call me Billy..."

"What is it, Will? I'm carrying a passenger."

"How are you feeling?"

"Come again?"

"7936 has come down with something. He can't remember his last route."

"Seriously Will? You know Marcus has a bad memory."

"That's not all. 7375 and 7143 can't remember their last routes either. We think there's a bug going around."

_"7143? That's Cooper's taxi!" _Carmelita thought.

"Didn't they check the GPS?"

_"GPS?"_

"Of course they did. It didn't do any good. I want all taxis to head back. If you have a passenger, make them your last."

"Roger that."

The driver now turned towards Carmelita. "Sorry about that, Ma'am. Something strange is going on today. I'll take you to the police station. They can-."

"Actually, you can do me a bigger favor and escort me to your company's main building." She said, revealing a shiny badge to the driver.

"Interpol? No wonder you got lost... Certainly." The driver simply smiled at her.

A sharp U-turn later, Carmelita was certain that she was headed in the right direction.

_"Now I'm getting somewhere."_ Carmelita thought as the taxi pulled up to the company's building.

When they arrived, she was rudely greeted by a cheetah whom she assumed to be the manager. Maybe 'greeted' wasn't the right word to use.

"What's going on here? Why did you bring a passenger? I can't deal with this right now; go drop her off someplace out of my sight."

Her driver got out of his car and revealed himself as a muscular stallion.

"Sorry Billy, she wanted to come here. Isn't that right, Insp-"

Ignoring the driver's reason entirely, the cheetah grew furious.

"I don't care if she wanted to come here. You broke your route and disobeyed orders."

Carmelita took this chance to defend the driver. "Actually, he was just doing his job. Billy, you said for the drivers to drop off their last passenger."

Billy now targeted Carmelita directly. "Look, you must be a tourist; otherwise, Frankie wouldn't have picked you up. Obviously you can't understand how things work around here. Why don't you go someplace that you can't get into trouble?"

He didn't see the driver's obvious hand signals until it was too late.

"I'd love too, but I have a few questions to ask a couple of your drivers. I'll also need to see your GPS units." She said, flashing her badge once again.

The cheetah's tone changed instantly. "Interpol?" he stammered. "There's something big going on and- Oh, silly me; I'm in your way... Please come in Inspector. I can get you what you need."

"Call down, William. I'm not going to arrest you... Your wife can handle with the affair on her own."

As the cheetah rushed inside, the taxi driver followed Carmelita, secretly whispering.

"That was amazing. He's been cheating on his wife for a few months now. How did you know that?"

"Educated guess... Turns out I was right." Carmelita replied. "No one told his wife?"

"None of us had the heart to do it. By the way, don't you need a warrant for something like this?"

"What Billy doesn't know won't hurt him..."

"Dang... You got some guts... Gonna be tough for you to find a guy that can keep up with you."

"You'd be surprised, Frankie." The inspector smiled at the driver who came in front of her and opened the door. "I've been the one trying to keep up lately."

The cheetah was sweating bullets by the time that the inspector entered his office.

Thanks to his sudden cooperation, the manager was able to provide Carmelita with exactly what she needed. According to the GPS units, the three taxi drivers that lost their memories were at the Boston airport around 5 that morning. They took different paths, but all three stopped within a town in called Salem.

She was then able to narrow down her search field to a quarter of a mile in diameter.

Asking Frankie for another favor, he dropped her off at the nearest police station in Boston. There, she was reunited with Inspector Barkley and Sargent Elias James.

"What are you guys doing here?" Carmelita asked her superior, meaning to only question the Sargent's reason.

"The better question is to ask is where you were for the last few hours." Barkley's voice boomed.

"I got lost... I barely missed Cooper and I went to track him down. I found a lead and followed it."

"That's excellent work, Ms. Fox." Barkley practically sang. "So, you know where they are?"

"Not exactly... I've narrowed it down to within a quarter of a mile."

Inspector Barkley now turned to his successor and said with a serious tone. "Ms. Fox, it's time you took control. I want you to lead this case. What's our next move, Inspector?"

Carmelita was momentarily stunned by her boss' proposal. "Well, we need to find out what Cooper is planning. We'll have to get close, but not too close. Otherwise we'll scare him off again."

"Agreed," The Sargent got up from his chair, "I suggest that we make our temporary headquarters at the police station nearest to your search field."

"What do you think, Ms. Fox?" Barkley asked, again assigning Carmelita the lead role.

"I think that's a great idea. Let's keep an eye on the streets. There's a chance that a member of the Cooper gang might be out in plain sight. I want to be able to calmly handle it, clear?"

"What do you mean, Inspector?" The Sargent asked.

"I don't want to scare them away. They trust me enough that I'll be able to convince them that all I want are some answers."

"Answers? What do you think they'll tell you?"

"I don't know. All I want is to know why all of this is happening. I just want to know why...

The Sargent looked confused, but Inspector Barkley simply smiled. "Alright Inspector. Lead the way."


	14. Step Five: More Profiling

A long afternoon of sight-seeing and relaxation was just what the Cooper Gang needed.

The next morning, everyone was well-rested and ready to go. But there was a problem...

While Bentley and Penelope tracked down the city, the team still had no idea as to exactly where Grimm Hund was.

"So what do you suggest?" Sly asked. "Should we go door-to-door?"

"No, no... There has to be something that we can use." Bentley muttered.

"What is there? This guy became a recluse after he escaped. Even the case-writer had no idea where Grimm Hund is hiding." Penelope said.

"What about all of the research you guys did?" Murray commented.

"You mean the presentation that you fell asleep to?" Sly remarked, causing Murray to shyly blush.

The Guru made a comment about how sleep was essential to one's focus. No one disagreed.

"Murray, the only clues that we have are the two photos from the 17th century and two auctions in different countries. The one in Massachusetts was five years ago." Bentley replied. "Grimm Hund escaped 15 years prior to that and was never seen since."

"The photos that I found only showed a courtroom and an old tree." Penelope said. "They were done hundreds of years ago. They'd be no use to us now. Unless..."

She tapped Bentley's shoulder and whispered in his ear. Bentley smiled and nodded. He opened his wheelchair's computer prompt. He then connected to the projector that they had brought along. The wall now displayed one of the portraits that Penelope had found. This one was of the dead tree and a wolf resting besides it.

"Bentley..." Penelope started to say.

"Already on it. Using your image as a reference and collecting data from satellite feeds. I can pinpoint the exact location with 85% accuracy."

"What is it? What's wrong?" she asked, noticing that after he pulled up the global view alongside the painting, he frowned in confusion.

"There's a landmark that's missing in the satellite images. I can't locate it in any of my results." Bentley used a pointer to draw attention to a shadowy figure that can be seen in an upper corner of the original photo, but not in any of the satellite images.

"What is that? A bird?" Murray asked. Penelope took note of how the figure looked to be perched one of the branches of the tree.

"Unlikely... The size of the object is comparable to a large vehicle, perhaps a small building. But, there's no trace of a building that was demolished. In fact, there's no evidence to suggest that a building ever existed in that location. While the size is known, the shape is however, completely unique." Penelope said.

"It's not entirely unique..." Bentley said softly.

This caught everyone's attention. Bentley became silent.

Sly was the first to urge him to speak. "Bentley... What are you hiding?"

Reluctantly, Bentley tapped a few keys, opening a second window on the display. This one had scanned photographs of the Cooper Ancestors. Covering all of the images was a prompt that said: 'Match Confirmed' as well as an option to view the results.

Bentley took notice of all of the faces in the room. He was worried that one of them would turn to anger. He might as well explain himself before that happened...

"Sly, do you remember the road-trip to the Krack-Karov Volcano that we made three years ago?"

Sly could remember that was little information on Clockwerk that they could use. They practically went into a full assault on his lair.

"Yeah... I do..."

"Well, you mentioned that some of the photos in your family's book had a shadow with an identity that was never actually confirmed."

"It was confirmed. Clockwerk was an enemy of the entire Cooper line. The Thievius Raccoonus contains multiple entries of my ancestors as they each encountered him. He even agreed to have been stalking my family for multiple generations." Sly added.

"I see." Bentley started. "I did some research of my own. With each ancestor's entry that we recovered, I unintentionally had copies of them on my computer. When I scanned Penelope's image of the shape, it matched it to the shadows that stalked your ancestors."

"You couldn't possibly mean-"

"My computer doesn't lie. The shadows of Clockwerk match the shape in the painting to near perfection."

"So that explains how Grimm Hund could be immortal." Penelope said. "He wasn't made immortal like Clockwerk-"

"He was made immortal by Clockwerk, himself." Sly said. "And if he has Clockwerk's immortality..."

"He might also have his hate." Bentley said. "I think I have it all figured out. Using Grimm's wife as a trigger to fuel his hate, Clockwerk must have created another immortal being. The only question is to ask why..."

"Isn't it obvious?" Sly commented. "The old bird got tired of being beaten. He must've needed someone to take his place."

"Take his place?" Murray gasped. "That means that he's-"

"He's most likely been programed to eliminate the Cooper family." Bentley said.

"Something doesn't add up..." Sly said, "If this is all true, why hasn't Grimm challenged my family at all? The Thievius Raccoonus doesn't even mention him let alone label him as a major threat."

"You have a point... Certain events, such as his arrest so many years ago, would keep him unable to attack your family." Bentley said. "But the fact still remains... According to his file, Grimm Hund escaped only 20 years ago. We met at the orphanage about 13 years ago. That means that-"

"Grimm Hund killed my father." Sly said randomly. "He could've killed me."

"Sly, we have no proof of that." Penelope came around to comfort him. "You already destroyed your father's murderer."

It wasn't helping at all.

"But he could've easily been involved. He could've known about his death."

"That's... possible." Penelope said, regretting that she did.

Sly just grew furious. "Come on Bentley! If there is anything that we can do, let's get the show on the road! We aren't getting anything done by sitting here!"

"This is all we have to use, Sly. There might be a clue by this tree, but I don't know what you're expecting to find."


	15. Inspiration

Taking a long and mostly painful walk, the team made it to the tree.

There was nothing special about this tree. Its leaves were green, unlike the photo. Bentley was certain that this was the tree, but there was nothing close-by. This tree was in a remote location outside of town. A very far and remote location...

"Bentley... Can we maybe get some wheels for this mission? My feet are tired."

The Guru, who was sitting on his pupil's shoulders, made a complaint over Murray's speed.

"I'm already working on it Murray..." the turtle responded breathlessly.

"Please do something soon... I can't keep pushing you for much longer." Penelope wheezed.

"Then let me take over again..." Bentley panted, allowing Penelope to rest in his lap while he used his arms to roll his chair. "If this keeps up, I might have enough upper-body strength to challenge Murray in an arm wrestling match."

"We'll see Bentley..." Murray responded.

And where was Sly during all of this? He was several feet in front of him panting for breath as well.

Sly collapsed in the middle of the walk. The team rushed to his aid, thinking that he had passed out. They all were relieved to find him still breathing.

"I guess I'm not as fit as I used to be..." Sly said between breaths. "Guys... This was a bad idea on my part."

"Perhaps I should share the blame," Bentley said. "I neglected to mention the exact distance."

"I don't think it would've mattered." Sly said.

"So now what do we do?" Murray said.

The Guru groaned at his student. He waved his staff as he chanted. Immediately afterwards, a gentle misty rain began falling on top of them. The Guru shrieked in surprise as the soft rain cooled and relaxed the team.

With the rain now lifting their spirits, the team marched on. To lighten the mood further, a popular song was being spontaneously performed by the Cooper Gang. One of the lines happened to be about getting caught in the rain.

Energized and upbeat, the team arrived at the tree to confirm Bentley's theory. This was just a tree. The tree held no clues nor was there a building nearby. The engraved stone and golden necklace were both missing.

Defeated, Sly leaned against the tree and rested. Bentley circled the tree multiple times, hoping to discover a marking or a clue. Penelope noticed that although the rain had stopped, the clouds were still gray. The Guru was still riding Murray's shoulders.

The Guru decided to play a prank. Regardless of being on his shoulders, Murray was not an easy target to control. This is considering the fact that Murray knew that trick already.

However, Murray was happy to help his master. Listening to the whispered instructions, Murray charged directly at the tree. As old as the tree had to be, it stood unmoved as the Hippo struck it with a large thud...

Their plan had failed. Sly had fallen asleep and ignored the charging hippo. Murray staggered back in agony. However, the attempt wasn't entirely useless as an apple fell from the tree and struck Sly on the head before rolling away.

Seeing the entire incident, Bentley busted up laughing. Penelope turned to see what it was and began laughing as well; needing only seconds to get the joke. Murray had a headache for a few minutes as his master tended to him.

Awake now, Sly opened his eyes to see that two of his friends were laughing, and the other two were groaning in regret. As he looked, he saw a large house. From here, he could tell that the house was in terrible condition. It was surrounded by a few smaller houses that had been recently evacuated.

_"__Go big or go home,"_ Sly thought.

That's it! That's where Grimm was hiding! Sly was sure of it.

"Bentley, I think I found him." He said, snapping the laughing duo back to reality.

Looking at each other in disbelief, Bentley shrugged "Score one for Isaac..." Penelope nodded in agreement.

"Let's worry about Isaac later, Sly's got an idea!" Murray exclaimed, the incident of moments earlier having little effect on him.

"You bet I do pal!" Sly exclaimed; that mischievous smile forming on his face.


End file.
